


Books and Needles Just Don't Mix

by khooliha



Category: Evil Dead (Movies), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khooliha/pseuds/khooliha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash Williams is a man on a mission: the remaining copies of the Necronomicon are calling to him for some reason and he plans on putting an end to it.<br/>Herbert West is also a man on a mission: to continue his reanimation research however he has to.<br/>Turns out evil books and cadavers are often kept in the same place and the paths of these two very different men cross...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A couple quick notes: Ash in this story is going to be in more of the Evil Dead 2 mold than the Army of Darkness mold, though the events of AoD have occurred. I am going off of the theatrical ending to AoD because otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. Herbert is based entirely off of the original Re-Animator - this story takes place after the end of that movie and ignores the events of Bride and Beyond.
> 
> This is also the first fanfic I've ever written and I'm super fucking nervous about it!

The bar was raucous in the way only college bar could be, shot through with that certain special something that comes of having just wrapped up that week in the middle of the semester where every single fucking professor dumped an important exam, as if none of them ever even talked to one another. It was ridiculous.

So ridiculous, in fact, that it could only be exorcised by getting drunk with laser-like intensity, something many college students were good at. They were in the middle of it right then; music was blasting over the speakers and they were yelling at one another even louder and laughing even louder than that, if you can believe it. Nothing could ruin this marvelous unloading of weight, not a single thing in all the world. Not the promise of a killer hangover the next day. Not the looming specter of final exams before winter break. Not the shitty rock and roll someone had loaded the bar iPod with. Nothing.  


Except, this night, a figure. It was two figures actually and they weren’t especially alike, but most everyone was drunk or distracted enough to meld them into one being. They felt the same, if that made any sense to anyone. It did not make sense to the police who spent the next morning (and the rest of the weekend) questioning surly students who couldn’t really remember all that well.  


Except that the figure (the two of them, actually) felt… grim and determined and maybe sad? They certainly weren’t drunk, though maybe they were nursing a cheap beer (only one of them was). Strange was the word that kept coming up over and over, so much so that every cop had it written in their notebook and every cop had angrily underlined it and made some note about drunk, stupid kids. Strange was nothing to go on, nothing at all…  


Back in the bar, in the now, two strangers were circling around the students and breaking into vitally important conversations about nothing to ask very specific questions.  
One of the figures was a short man who had wrapped himself in a dark coat and an almost palpable sense of disgust. Glare off of his large glasses hid brown eyes that held nothing but contempt for the rabble and burning intensity. He had a doctor’s bag with him and even in the throng he deftly kept it from being carelessly jostled by the drunks enjoying the night around him. Reports the next day agreed that he was all drive, all coiled springs and certainty.  


His name was Herbert West and he was asking about where the medical department kept their cadavers.  


He was helped, of course – few types of students are as adept at blowing off steam as med students are. In the shorter part of the L shaped building down the street a bit? First floor, nearest the southern wall? He didn’t thank a one of them which, oddly, was one of the few details that everyone got right the next day even if they remembered nothing else.  


The other figure didn’t stalk the room the same way Herbert did. He moved slowly and cautiously around the space, one hand clenched around the sweating beer he had bought to blend in. If anyone had been bothered to look closely they would have seen the slight tremble of that hand. And if anyone had looked even closer they would have seen that that tremble did not extend to his other hand, which was prosthetic. He was tall, with dark wavy hair and a face full of scars. His wardrobe was unremarkable, workmanlike, and he carried an air of wariness, of sadness. Where Herbert had held himself apart from the crowd this man tried his best to blend in, though he failed rather miserably – he was far too nervous for any student that had just conquered a round of exams. Somehow people noticed this, but not the thick streak of white in his hair at the right temple.  


His name was Ashley J. Williams and he was inquiring about where the anthropology department housed their antiquities.  


It turns out that they were kept on the first floor of the L shaped building down the street (the bottom floor was good and cool, you see, though no one explained to him why that was). Once he got confirmation he carefully placed the almost untouched beer on a dirty table and got the hell out of the cloud of college the bar had become.  


Out into the cool night walked Herbert and Ash, separated only by a handful of minutes, but united in destination and surety of purpose. Both of their lives were about to take yet another turn, one neither of them would have ever predicted.  


They just didn’t know that yet.


	2. Chapter 1

Herbert loved the sound of his shoes clicking against the pavement on an empty campus. He didn’t get to experience it often – not in Switzerland and not at Miskatonic, but it seemed like all the students were out getting plastered. He couldn’t keep the sneer from his face as he thought about the lot of them. They were wasting such valuable research time in the bottoms of a series of cheap bottles.  


No matter – it was going to make his task easier. Breaking and entering was still something of a new endeavor for him, but with each instance he was getting better. Still, the fewer people he had to deal with the better.  


Herbert knew that the shipment was of relatively fresh corpses, but he couldn’t help but be disappointed at how old they would be by the time he got to them. A couple days wasn’t the end of the world, but he had always gotten his best results with brand new corpses. Like Doctor Hill…  


Herbert lifted a hand to his left temple to lightly touch a small burn scar there. Every experiment since that scar had left him with the secret, tiny hope that each new trial didn’t work quite so well as Dr. Hill had. It made him angry with himself – no self-respecting scientist ever hoped for their own failure.  


Straightening his spine Herbert picked up his pace. There, to the left, was the building he was looking for. A glass set of double doors greeted him on the southern wall and, hopefully, he tugged at one of the handles. The door was locked, of course; it was fairly late at night and newer buildings like this usually locked automatically. He eyed the key card reader at the side of the door and ground his teeth. It was harder to break into these newer buildings. Not impossible though – he had ended death. Nothing was impossible for him.  


He fell back, half-leaning on a nearby lamppost so that he could get at the innards of his doctor’s bag. If all else failed he had a screwdriver that he could probably break the glass with. Herbert was mid-rummage when he heard another set of footsteps and, on instinct, fell back into the shadows.  


There, passing in and out of the pools of lamp light, was a tall dark man in a navy jacket and, for a moment, Herbert thought it was Dan and his heart stopped beating for a few ticks. But no, now that the figure was closer he could see that it wasn’t Dan at all, not close. It looked like it was just some student who maybe was going to go into the building. This was a perfect chance to just sneak his way in. Herbert smiled to himself in the dark and readied himself to slip in behind.  


However, it quickly became clear that this man wasn’t a student at all. He yanked on the door handle a moment too long and irritably blew air out between his teeth. No, not a student at all, or one who had forgot his key card. Herbert sank back further into the shadows to wait for him to leave. But then the figure gripped his own wrist and savagely pulled and his hand came off and Herbert couldn’t keep a surprised little “Ah!” from escaping his throat.  


***  


Ash froze and slid backwards into the sliver of shadow that the building threw in a hopeless effort to hide. He hadn’t noticed anyone in the dark, but he hadn’t been looking – he had been focusing on how to break into this university building. He had taken off his prosthetic, mostly because he hated wearing it, but partially because he kept a bit of cobbled together electronics in the hand that he could use to override the electronic lock. He didn’t need to get caught trying to break in anywhere – he had a mission that he could not carry out from inside a jail cell.  


Because the book was calling to him from inside the building, only getting worse as he got closer to it. His tongue was itching to say the words inscribed inside the Necronomicon, the ones to summon Deadites and to give them solid form and ones he had never even heard before but was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to say. Ash struggled to drag his attention away from the presence of the book and back to the patch of darkness that had made the surprised noise.  


“Yes,” it said, sounding surer of itself now and Ash watched as a small man stepped into view. Ash would have sworn that the man was a student, but the both of them were standing around in the cold night and not inside, so he must be in a similar boat. How similar? He’d have to tread carefully until he found out…  


“You, uh, you trying to get in?” Ash asked, gesturing with his one good hand. Which was still holding his prosthetic hand and he felt foolish and stupid. The man made no secret of noticing and arched one eyebrow in chilly disbelief.  


Still, he answered Ash’s question. “Yes,” he said, clipped and curt but he was looking at Ash with interest. For his part, Ashley felt self-conscious looking down into the small man’s eyes, suddenly unsure of his device no matter how many times he had tested it. He fished it out anyway though, casting a single look at the stranger in the dark. The small man had drawn closer and was peering around Ash to get a closer look at the small tangle of wires and metal. Another eyebrow arch.  


“That is going to get us inside?”  


Ash frowned. “You have a better idea?” In his irritation he forgot to stay guarded about what he was doing. “People breaking into buildings can’t be choosers. Pretty sure that’s how that saying goes.”  


To Ash’s surprise the man smiled a small but sincere smile. “Fair point.” The stranger was trying to keep his voice level and serious, but it lilted up ever so lightly in the two word sentence. So. Whoever this was he wasn’t all cold seriousness.  


Ash shook his head. It really didn’t matter what this man was like. All that mattered was getting in and destroying that book. He pressed his device against the key card reader and, after a sweaty moment, it beeped and the door opened under the short man’s hand. He held it open for Ashley and, slightly bewildered at the courtesy, he went inside.  


***  


Herbert was biting back a laugh at the oaf’s face as he held the door open for him. His device made from the leavings at the bottom of a hardware store bag had opened the door despite what logic would have dictated. The man’s eyes were ever so slightly unfocused and glassy and Herbert figured he was on some sort of low level street drug. Probably here to light a professor’s desk on fire or something. It didn’t matter to Herbert, of course; he had a mission and it was at hand.  


“Thank you,” he did say and the oaf turned back and looked even more confused and lost. Somehow the tall man’s eyes pierced through his personal miasma, found him and focused.  


“You’re welcome,” he said and something in it killed the laughter inside of Herbert. He set his face in a cold mask and gave the man a nod. He nodded back and then they parted without a word.  


Herbert followed the chill in the air and it wasn’t long before he found the door he needed. There was no key card reader here, just a regular lock, and he dug around a moment in the bag for his lock picking tools. It was the work of only a few minutes and then he was in and ready to browse the toe tags.  


As usual most of the corpses were too old or too damaged to attempt to reanimate. His frustration was building right up to the last table. Of course, a John Doe bit by some godforsaken snake in this godforsaken state. Even if the reanimation wasn’t totally effective at least he’d have some data on how the reagent interacted with venoms.  


Herbert pulled out his recorder and started it, pulling out his reagent and a fresh needle next. He extracted just a little less than his last experiment and carefully cradled the John Doe’s head. This was bound to work this time.  


***  


Ashley was staring resolutely ahead, careful not to look at the mirrors lining the hallway he was in. His hand crept up to the necklace, Linda’s necklace, that was hidden just under his shirt. He was pretty sure that he couldn’t get possessed as long as he had it, but nothing was certain. He was also pretty sure that he had left his evil Deadite self back in the 1300s but he was also sure that he had seen strange twitches in his reflection recently. He’d learned his lesson with mirrors.  


He was still nervous about all these mirrors.  


Door after door after door and Ash was worried that he wasn’t going to be able to find the room that the artifacts were kept in on his first pass. He really didn’t want to have to walk through the hall of mirrors more than twice so he peeled his eyes and willed himself to find the stupid fucking door.  


Here it was, last on the hallway of course, and Ash was just about to check and see if the door was unlocked when a bloodcurdling shriek tore through the empty building. His head jerked back and in an instant he was vibrating with the all too familiar fight or flight drives. There was another scream and all his tiny hairs were standing on end. The cries of Deadites filled his mind and his mouth went dry. Could the Necronomicon have called some of them here to stop him?  


The image of the small, intense stranger flashed across his mind. Fuck. Without even touching the door knob Ash took off running down the hallway, back in the direction the stranger had gone.  


***  


The reanimation had been going so well – the now-living corpse had waited a quiet moment and seemed on the edge of listening to him, but that all had lasted less than a minute. It was a record but that wasn’t really keeping Herbert warm now that cold, strong hands were wrapped firmly around his neck. He was beating at the arms but it was having less than no effect and the edges of his vision were beginning to shade into darkness. Herbert felt the corpse’s fingernails breaking his skin and his blood beginning to seep out and then the world tilted violently. The hands let go and Herbert sucked in a desperate breath, coughing on his hands and knees. He hadn’t gotten his breath back when there was one loud thunderclap of sound, then a second, and his ears were ringing and the corpse thudded down next to him with a set of gaping holes in its head and chest.  


Herbert’s head was still spinning when a rough hand seized him by the shoulder. “Are you alright?” and it was the oaf and he was peering into his face, full of concern. He had dropped a sawed off double barreled shotgun and Herbert flared with irritation. He wrenched out of the stranger’s grasp.  


“Do you always go around shooting up people’s research?”  


“What?” The oaf was legitimately confused. “It was choking you! I just saved your life!”  


“You ruined my experiment!” Herbert spat back, finally staggering to his feet. “Let’s just hope you didn’t destroy my recorder too.” He ignored the stranger and began gathering up his things, muttering to himself. Now that there had been gun shots someone was bound to call the police and he needed to get out of here as fast as possible.  


The tall man was still standing there, an equal mix of anger and confusion, a combination he wore surprisingly well. Herbert also couldn’t help but notice that he was wearing a weird chest harness and he watched as the oaf flipped his gun into the holster on his back. Great. He had broken into a college building with an armed and dangerous man.  


Herbert clicked his case closed and glared at the man in front of him. “Thank you once again for ruining my work. I hope-“  


But before he could finish the oaf staggered a bit and clutched at his head. Herbert watched, unwillingly fascinated, and the man choked out “Kandaar…” then clutched at his chest, gripping some unseen necklace or something. He straightened as Herbert watched and without another word took off running in the opposite direction. Herbert didn’t feel like he was done being angry at this stranger and he took off after him. If the police showed up he’d just pin it on the oaf – the man didn’t look like he could defend himself in any meaningful way.  


***  


If that had been a Deadite the Necronomicon was not happy he had killed it. The words were bubbling up now in his throat but he was managing to keep most of them down. Most of them.  


He flew past the mirrors and something strange was happening in them but he ignored it, opting instead to crash into the door with a shoulder, desperation giving him strength. The door splintered and he drew back and smashed again and now the door gave way. Ash crashed into the little room and looked around wildly. It wasn’t an interesting space but it was small and clean and well organized. And normal, thankfully.  


And there was the book, another copy of the thing that had been dogging his every moment since that ill-fated weekend. When he had found out there was more than one copy in the world he had thought about suicide, and when they had begun calling to him through his nightmares he had almost done it, but something in him wouldn’t let him abandon the world to the foul thing. He would stop these books, even if it killed him.  


Ash snatched the book up and backed out of the room. He’d burn it outside, away from smoke detectors and mirrors, out in the lamplight and the relative safeness of the college town. Then he’d get the fuck out of here and get on his way. There were quieter calls to deal with, after all.  


He turned back the way he came and he pulled up because the small man was still there, burning with anger. The anger dissipated somewhat to be replaced by surprise when he laid eyes on the book. His throat worked for a moment and Ash filled with a sudden fear that the book would make him say the damn words.  


“Don’t!” Ash snapped, stepping forward to stop whatever the little man was going to do. He stepped right into the hallway and had one instant of peripheral vision before his reflection thrust from the mirrored wall, grinning cruelly.  


***  


For a moment strange words clouded Herbert’s mind, but they were all swept away by morbid curiosity about the book in the oaf’s hand. It looked like skin. It had a face! There were definitely teeth in there. He opened his mouth, hoping to figure out what question to ask first by the time he started speaking, but the oaf was striding forward and yelling “Don’t!” and then, impossibly, the oaf’s reflection leaned out of the mirrors on the wall and it wrapped its hands around the oaf’s neck.  


The tall stranger dropped the book and immediately began to struggle against his doppelganger, yanking backward with a feral intensity. The reflection frowned in consternation and tried to pull the oaf closer but then, suddenly, with a muscle clenching finality the tall man pulled out of his copy’s grasp. Unfortunately the copy’s claws had still been at the stranger’s throat and Herbert watched, still morbid and fascinated, as the claws tore out the tall man’s jugular.  


He fell backwards with a small, terrible wheeze and his double frowned down at him, seemingly unhappy with this result. Then, without another moment of hesitation, it leaned down and scooped up the bizarre book and melted back into the mirror and was gone.  


And on the ground the oaf was bleeding terribly and before Herbert could even blink the light faded from his dark eyes. This man was dead.


	3. Chapter 2

Thinking would have taken too much time – lucky for the dead man Herbert West had sharp, heedless instincts. He scrabbled through his bag without looking, drawing out his reagent and a syringe. Long practice allowed him to draw out the appropriate amount of the green liquid with only a single brief glance.

Three things drove him forward. The first, always the first, was his instinct as a scientist – this was valuable data just waiting to be collected. Second was his frustration in the face of death. What had driven him into this line of work but the desire to conquer humanity’s greatest obstacle? Third was something more personal, more specific to this evening: this man had helped him break into a building and then saved his life without asking a single question. A life for a life. Herbert owed the stranger and planned on repaying him in the best way he knew how.

He slid to the floor, hauling the cooling body into his lap and shoving enough to get mostly unfettered access to the back of the neck. The needle slipped in smooth and Herbert watched as the neon reagent was pushed into the body. There, the whole dose administered. Now he just had to wait and see how the stranger would come back.

With the sound of sirens beginning in the distance Herbert sat on the bloody floor with a stranger’s body in his lap, reduced to hoping.

***

There was… nothing. Nothing? He was not sure how he had gotten here, but he knew it wasn’t where he had come from. He still existed, that much was clear, but this was unusual. What had he been expecting? That was probably worth considering…

Hell. It washed over him suddenly and, despite his lack of corporeal form, he shivered. He had been forced into Hell twice and he would never forget the pain and the terror, the cries he was forced to hear, screams of Scott and Shelly and Cheryl and Linda…

Ashley. That was his name and he hadn’t been possessed before this, so it made since he wasn’t in whatever hellish dimension the Deadites came from. No, Evil Ash had been choking him, claws digging in, and then… How had he gotten here? He thought, thought hard, but a pinpoint of darkness in the grey nothing was tugging at his attention. He tried to push it away but it was just growing now, irising towards him at an alarming speed. Ash only had a moment to worry about it before the dark slammed into him, throwing his head back-

And he gasped in air, real air, and he was staring up directly into the eyes of the small stranger (who was between anticipation and worry and Ash could see triumph and relief dawning on his features in slow motion) and Ash reached up desperately, hooking his arm around the back of the man’s neck. His throat was dry and hurt but he managed to force out two syllables anyway.

“The book?”

***

“The book?” croaked the reanimated stranger and Herbert’s heart leapt. This was as good a reanimation as Dr. Hill had been, one of the most promising he had seen. Speech! A lack of violent reaction! It could change in an instant but this was a very good start.

“The book?” the stranger asked again, voice already growing in strength and now he was trying to haul himself to his feet using only Herbert’s neck as a handhold. Herbert quickly pulled himself to his feet and extended a hand to help up his subject. It was accepted and Herbert couldn’t help but think about how, at this point with Dr. Hill his head was being smashed into a desk and his work was being stolen. Yes, this was going far better.

Maybe it helped that he hadn’t killed this man.

It did seem prudent to answer the tall man’s question. “Your… reflection. It stole the book.” Answering forced him to think about the bizarre scene that had killed his subject. “Does that sort of thing happen often?”

“What happened?” rasped the stranger and he turned, somewhat hesitant, he looked in a mirror, eyes zeroing in on his torn up neck.

Herbert drew himself up, filling with pride. “You were dead, but I brought you back. My name is Herbert West – may I welcome you back to the land of the living?”

***

Ash heard the man’s words but they seemed to bounce off of his mind. Dead? He’d been dead before, soul forced from his body, but this had been different. Had he really been dead? And if he had, how could this Herbert West have brought him back? Ash turned back to his reflection, even more nervous about the act than he had been before. He had to see though.

Well, if he had been dead it wasn’t the tiniest bit surprising – the gouges on either side of his neck were deep and terrible. Ash watched, fascinated, as a little more blood seeped out and was followed by a viscous, bright green liquid. That seemed bad.

Indeed, he was feeling a bit like a vending machine that someone had pour molasses into. It was spreading slowly, languorously, and it didn’t hurt but it did feel strange. The green gummed up his neck wounds and they stopped leaking. That was… good?

“What did you do?” he asked West while poking gently at his wounds.

“In the course of my work I discovered a reagent that can restart the brain after death. I used it to bring you back. How are you feeling, by the way?” Ash saw movement in the mirror and turned around to see West pulling a notebook out of his coat pocket and scribbling into it so fast that Ash doubted he’d be able to read the notes later.

How was he feeling? Odd, a little uncomfortable, deeply unhappy that he had died, but it was a thousand times better than his other two instances of being dead. “Off,” he said and when West looked up with undisguised irritation he elaborated. “Whatever you gave me is really thickening up in here and it’s uncomfortable but I think I can get used to it. I’m fucking mad about getting killed too, but that probably isn’t notable.”

West’s eyebrows had quirked together in concern while he was talking and his pencil hovered over the paper in hesitation. “Thickening… You aren’t feeling any violent, animalistic urges, are you?”

It was Ash’s turn to feel concerned. “Animalistic? Wait, you brought that person back earlier, didn’t you? It wasn’t a Deadite it was you… And it – it was mad! It was a monster, not a person!”

West gave one brief glance up and took a quick step backwards. “Yes, well, my experiments are not usually as successful as this…”

He trailed off and Ash took one massive step towards him, snatching up a handful of the man’s coat to keep him from getting away. “You’re telling me I could have come back like that?!”

“It was a very real possibility. You are the second fully successful reanimation I’ve carried out…”

“What?!” Ash was winding up to shake the hell out of this little scientist but a siren’s cry cut through to both of them and they turned simultaneously to stare out the distant glass doors into the night. Ash threw West away from him, turning to make a quick retreat. He hadn’t made it a whole step when he felt an insistent grip on his wrist.

“I’m not leaving you! You’re valuable data!” West’s face was set in determination and Ash knew all at once that trying to get rid of the man was just going to waste time.

“Fine,” he snarled and took off, long strides forcing West to jog a bit to keep up. “Do you have a car?” Behind him West just shook his head. “Then we’re heading for mine. Keep up or I’m leaving you behind.”

“That will not be a problem,” West answered simply and Ash felt his heart sink a bit. Each word of the statement had been carved out of certainty. He was stuck with the scientist. He turned back slightly without stopping.

“I’m Ashley Williams, Ash if you want.” Even as he made his introduction Ash was wracking his brain to figure out how best to ditch West in the near future.

“Good to meet you Ashley. You can call me Herbert.”


	4. Chapter 3

All of Herbert’s questions were clanging against the back of his throat fighting each other to get out first. Questions about Ashley’s condition, questions about the book and the reflection. Questions about the words that were looping hazily through the back of his mind, muted but still there.

Questions about this awful _car_. Old and junky and discolored it brought Herbert to a sudden stop. He eyed Ashley, nonverbally begging the man to have made some parking mistake and no this was not the car they would be travelling in. When he just set about unlocking the thing and putting his stuff inside of it Herbert increased the priority of his plan to get his new subject back to Miskatonic for proper monitoring. There had to be some way to entice him back to Massachusetts.

That plan would need so real work though, so Herbert climbed into Ashley’s car, trying to flinch as little as possible. He could tell he wasn’t entirely successful because Ashley was glaring at him.  


“Sorry,” he offered, trying to come up with some excuse but Ashley just waved it off.

“We just need to get a move on. I shouldn’t be so surprised that the cops came so quickly – gunshots will do that.”

“And they’re probably looking for me,” Herbert said, more to himself than his companion but it caught Ashley’s attention.

“Oh?” he said, the question just having the thinnest, sharpest edge of danger. “You do this sort of thing often?”

Herbert shrugged, not looking at the driver. “The forward march of science needs fuel. I plan on eliminating death – what are a few experiments in the face of that?”

“Great,” Ashley growled and twisted his hands around the banged up steering wheel. “So glad I’m on the run with a mad scientist.”  


Herbert decided to not even dignify this comment with a response. After all, he had heard it many times before from people better than the fool beside him. A frosty silence settled inside of the car, pressing questions momentarily forgotten in the cold.

After a long moment Ashley spoke. “I do want to thank you though, West. For bringing me back.”

Herbert went very still in his seat. He wasn’t often thanked for things, let alone for his life’s work. From the very mouth of someone he had given life too! He had no idea how to deal with this, so he kept staring straight ahead. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he looked at Ashley right in this moment.

Ashley, for his part, seemed to be waiting for a response and when the silence stretched into awkwardness he cleared his throat. “I have something I need to do and it will probably be dangerous. Do you still want to come with me?”

***

For the second time in the minute Ash thought that West was just going to sit there silently and leave all the talking to him and if that was the case then he was just going to drive silently himself until he couldn’t anymore. Ash could feel himself getting needlessly worked up but it was hard to tamp down for whatever reason. He prepared to strangle his steering wheel again when West finally spoke up.

“I need to monitor you in case something goes wrong and for general data collection. So yes, I plan on staying with you not matter how dangerous you think things will be.”

That tone was going to really get on his nerves, Ash could already feel it. “It’s not how dangerous I think it will be, it’s how dangerous _it is_. The Necronomicon pulls nasty tricks, worse than tonight.”

“Worse?” West was arching an eyebrow at him. “You _died_.”

“Right, like I said: worse.”

West chuckled to himself, but it was a soft and uncertain sound. “So, that book? That was the… the Necronomicon?”

Out of the corner of his eye Ash could see West shudder as he said it and that worried him. If the Necronomicon wanted reading he didn’t doubt it would try to use West for the job in the event that Ash, say, bit his own tongue out.

“Yeah. It’s an ancient book of burial and resurrection rites. Except it allows forces from somewhere else to enter our world. They’re called Deadites.”

Ash didn’t need to look over at West to know he was sneering. “Like some kind of demon?”

“Yes.” Ash was going to explain this levelly, no matter how snippy his passenger got about it - he promised himself that much. “They want bodies, or something; it can be hard to tell. They told me once they want what we have – life. Anyway, I’ve destroyed two copies of the fucking thing but recently I began to hear more.”

“Hear?” This question wasn’t snide, more worried than anything else, and Ash turned from the road briefly to regard West. His brows were knitted together in concern.

“Yeah, in my sleep or when I’m quiet. There were 5 copies, I think, but I can only hear four now. They want me to read them, or something. Again, it’s kind of hard to tell.” Ash paused, then took a breath for the next bit he needed to tell West. “That doppelganger? That’s an evil version of myself that’s followed me back from the past.”

“The past.” West’s voice was flat, disbelieving.

“Yeah, around the 13th century.”

“Demons and time travel Mr. Williams? Books with wills? That is what you expect me to believe?”

“You saw my copy! You can’t deny that part! And I think the Necronomicon spoke to you too, so yes I expect you to believe this.” The silence stretched out again and West seemed to just be looking out the window. “Whether you think it’s a psychosis or the truth it’s part of my deal. I’m not stopping until the job is done. I’ll ask you again: are you sure you want to come with me?”

***

It was ridiculous, of course. He was a man of science and all of this sounded like superstition, like magic!

But he _had_ seen a reflection lean halfway out of a mirror and tear a man’s throat out. And even now distant, smoky words were threading through his mind most unsettlingly. It was all preposterous but it was also all there and closing in around him.

And Ashley was just driving like this complete upheaval meant less than nothing and Herbert felt a sudden pang for the man, who likely had faced these discoveries in a far less hospitable environment. A face full of scars, a missing hand…

There was the science to think about too, of course. Could the success of this reanimation be linked to the man’s previous, possibly supernatural experiences? That would bear investigation.

No, Herbert didn’t know if he believed all of what Ashley had told him, or some of it, or none of it. He did know one thing though – this man was his subject and that came before all else.

So Herbert turned back from the window and looked at Ashley and said “I am sure.”

***

Ash just barely managed to keep his disappointment in check. How he longed to pull over and just leave the snotty little scientist somewhere! No point in dwelling on the impossible though. And he should think about it this way: if the Necronomicon did want to use West for whatever its plans were Ash would be able to keep an eye on him.

“Alright. Now, I have some questions of my own.”

“About the reanimation?” West leaned back into his chair and seemed to relax. Ash belatedly remembered that all the Deadite stuff was a bit much for normal people and that West was bound to feel more comfortable talking about something he was intimately familiar with.

“Is it supposed to feel so… viscous? It doesn’t seem to be slowing me down, thankfully, but it’s fucking weird.”

West looked honestly confused. “What do you mean?”

“The stuff you put in – I can feel it in all my veins and arteries and stuff.”

West was frowning now and pulling his notebook out of his bag. Ash felt his insides knot up – he really didn’t need something to be wrong with his coming back to life. His life was already shitty enough as it was.

“Feels… reagent…” West muttered to himself and he scribbled, then quickly wheeled on Ash. To Ash’s surprise the man seemed to be trying to be comforting. “Full disclosure: I haven’t really spoken scientifically to my previous subjects, so this may be normal. I have no way of knowing.” Then Ash watched him pull a scalpel from his bag. West looked up into his eyes, intense and questioning. “May I?”

Ash held his stump out and didn’t even flinch when the small blade sliced in. West leaned in and sucked air through his teeth and Ash finally stole a glance. Blood oozed from the wound and it was red and it was also neon green, the two colors mixing equally. The wound gummed up almost instantly and Ash took his limb back. West was taking notes at a furious speed.

“Is this… normal?”

West just shook his head and Ash tried to keep a hold on himself. “Other subjects have just displayed blood, not blood mixed with reagent.” Ash felt the blood (and the reagent _fuck_ ) drain out of his face. Once again West looked at him and tried to be reassuring. “The reagent is not lethal or anything, obviously, it’s just natural chemicals. Having it mixed in with your blood won’t hurt you.”

“But it’s not normal!”

“Well, no. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad though. You say it isn’t affecting you?”

It was Ash’s turn to just shake his head. West nodded and made yet another note.

“I will keep monitoring this situation Ashley – please let me know if something changes as soon as you can.”

***

Ashley was drumming his fingers against the wheel but seemed to be handling the situation rather well. Herbert imagined he had reason to be afraid of matters of life and death. Still, if nothing was affected how bad could it be? He’d keep an eye on Ashley, of course, that stood to reason.

He wanted to try and comfort Ashley, but he wasn’t sure how, so he settled for putting his notebook away and being quiet. Next to him Ashley stopped pummeling the wheel. “Why aren’t I tired? I feel like I ought to be tired.”

“Oh,” Herbert said, sitting up and happy to provide more information. “Not having to sleep is a documented effect of the reagent. I give myself small doses so that I can keep working.”

Ashley looked over and Herbert and, for the first time since they had met, Herbert watched something approaching happiness dawn on the tall man’s features. “No sleep?”

“None at all,” Herbert returned, slightly hesitantly.

Ashley was grinning now, full on, and Herbert couldn’t help but smile a bit in return even if he didn’t know why. “No sleep means no dreams. No nightmares! This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time West!”

He turned back to the road, humming happily under his breath and Herbert sank back into the passenger seat, feeling unusually satisfied. Then the comment about nightmares trickled down into his mind and he frowned just a little in the dark. He cast one more sideways glance at his companion. That had to be a troublingly large number of nightmares for him to be this happy about it.

Herbert turned back towards the window and gave Ashley some driving peace. He focused on the importance of the data he was going to be collecting to push the worry out of his mind. Too late he realized that he hadn’t taken any reagent himself today and was tired something awful. He tried to speak up, to let Ashley know, but he drifted away before he could do so.


	5. Chapter 4

He’d been driving all night, tirelessly, and the next book was getting closer. West was asleep in the passenger seat, despite his claim about not having to sleep at all. It didn’t matter though – the quiet allowed him to trace the book’s call in his mind. They’d be there soon.

Ash squinted into the rising sun and allowed himself to wonder, briefly, what his life might be like when this was over. He felt less human now than he had before, and he’d been doubting his humanity already. He doubted S-Mart would have him back, what with an extended leave with no notice. He had already been on thin ice with being gone for nearly a month because of not entirely accurate Middle Ages math that had woken him up relatively close to when he was pulled through time, but not close enough for retail. And then there was the mannequin he had wrecked because he thought it was his evil self…

No, S-Mart was probably out, unless different branches didn’t communicate with one another about problem employees. He couldn’t go back to college either, because all he could think about were his friends and his sister and Linda. And, eventually, people were going to start asking questions he couldn’t really answer.

No, he’d just have to make a new start somewhere else, somewhere far from where he had been. Everyone always seemed so hot on the coasts – maybe he’d finally see what the fuss was all about. Or maybe he’d play it safe and try to carve out a life in a Dakota or something.

_Or maybe I’ll just die_ he thought and he hated to admit that the idea wasn’t wholly unappealing. Unless being reanimated left you like a Deadite: unable to be killed. He thought about shaking West awake and demanding to be dismembered and it was completely ridiculous. The intense man would never do something like that. After all, Ash was pretty sure the scientist didn’t like him and was absolutely sure the man thought he was an idiot. With the path his life had taken Ash couldn’t exactly dispute the accusation and that was galling.

“I _cannot_ let him get on my nerves when he isn’t even awake or doing anything,” he said out loud, mostly to get out of his own head. Next to him West stirred.

***

Hazy dreams of blood and pain were interrupted by a half muttered sentence in the real world and Herbert let it pull him into wakefulness. On his nerves? What? Herbert was already offended without even being completely awake.

“I’m sorry, do I snore?” he asked stiffly, rolling his shoulders against the passenger seat and stretching as best he could.

“Oh! Oh, no no. Just talking to myself.” Ashley had jumped and was trying to smooth over his obvious fluster with suddenly careful driving. Something about it reminded him of Dan and this only irritated Herbert more.

“About me,” he said flatly.

“Well, yes. About you. I just had a long time to think all night and I came to the conclusion that you think I’m stupid.” Suddenly the man laughed, head tossed back slightly. “I’m not really helping clear up that impression though, am I?”

“You shouldn’t make assumptions,” Herbert said, trying to stay detached and cool. It was slightly harder than it usually was.

“Are you saying I’m wrong?”

“I’m not saying anything one way or the other.”

“I’ll take it,” Ashley said, leaning forward in his seat and smiling just a little. Herbert harrumphed while rubbing at his eyes. It had been so long since he had slept that he was having to readjust to the waking sensation. He hadn’t missed it and he made a solemn vow to himself to not miss another dose.

“Are we almost to a place we can stop? I need to eat something.”

“Huh,” Ashley grunted, looking down. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Do I not need to eat either?”

Herbert, deeply displeased with how groggy he still was, groped around for his case so he could administer some reagent immediately. “I honestly don’t know. My appetite isn’t huge, but it never has been.”

“Fast food breakfast okay?”

“I’ll bear it.” He drew out his personal needle and took a fraction of a reanimating dose up into it and injected himself. Next to him Ashley made a surprised sound.

“Just like that, huh?”

“Yes. Just like that.” Already Herbert could feel his blood quickening and his synapses firing. That was certainly better.

***

West was hemming and hawing over what to order, so Ash ordered an experimental hash brown and sat down, pulling his phone out of his pocket to do a little research. In between delicate nibbles he determined that the most likely location of the book currently sitting on top of his brain was a local museum. Even better luck, the museum was open for only a half-day Saturday. All he had to do was kill some time and then he could break in without having to worry about the public or museum staff. He thumbed through the museum’s website and noted all the things he would have to try hard not to break.

But maybe there wouldn’t be much fighting. Only Evil Ash had shown up at the last copy, so maybe the books weren’t properly able to defend themselves? Well, his double _had_ killed him, so they could defend themselves somewhat, but he’d defeated his doppelganger once before and he was sure he could do so again.

So long as West didn’t get into a scrape. Ash was hoping that he didn’t have to worry about the man too much. Ash looked up and saw the scientist moving towards him, already eyeing his breakfast suspiciously.

“If you don’t think you can trust it you should have ordered something else.”

“Excuse me?” West seemed very ready to turn on anyone that had ears, which sadly didn’t include his sausage biscuit.

“Never mind. Feel free to take your time, we’re not going in until this afternoon.”

“Going in where?” He was unwrapping his sandwich delicately and not looking at Ash.

“A museum. Half-Saturdays, so we don’t have to worry about running into other people.”

West considered this and, while he looked slightly irritated at the delay, he nodded and finally began eating. For a man that professed to have not much of an appetite he certainly devoured his disdained breakfast quickly enough. Ash regarded his own hash brown and was pleased to notice that it was mostly gone and he was feeling fine. Maybe he wouldn’t have the drive to eat but he could still do it if he wanted to. That was a bizarre perk.

Speaking of his condition… Ash leaned forward over the table, trying to catch the scientist’s eye. West, for his part, was finishing up and looked generally disappointed. Ash imagined he spent a lot of time looking like that.

“West,” he said finally, as staring wasn’t doing the job of attention getting. “I want to hear about all of your experiments. All of them.”

West glanced up over the top of his glasses and reached for his ridiculously large drink. “I am not keen on sharing my research, I’m sure you understand.”

Ash allowed his eyebrows to creep up in disbelief. “West, it’s my life now and I’d like to know everything you got about it. I’m sure you understand.” He felt anger creep in under the sarcasm of his last line. Then he slouched down in the plastic bench and stared straight at West.

West drew himself up and that, combined with the slouch, had Ash and the scientist at eye level with one another. For the first time Ash looked West straight in the eye and saw in them a burning intensity and a dark, greedy arrogance. Ash couldn’t be sure what he was projecting, but something in his eyes caused West to draw back and soften ever so slightly. He pressed his lips together and gave the tiniest nod.

“That does make sense.” For a moment Ash thought he might apologize, but instead he just reached once again into his bag for his dark, well-worn notebook. As West pulled it out something slipped from near its front, but he didn’t notice. It was a photo. Ash stooped to grab it up and considered it as he straightened. There was a dark haired man and a smaller blond woman and they were wrapped in each other’s arms and smiling. Ash was puzzled at how something so happy was in West’s possession. Before he could open his mouth to let West know about the dropped photo it was snatched from his hand so fast it almost gave him paper cuts. West was glaring, shaking slightly, and he stuffed the photo back into the front of the notebook.

“You take that?” Ash asked, trying to diffuse whatever mood had come upon the scientist. At his question a grim smile spread across West’s face, like he was laughing at a private joke.

“You could say that,” he forced out and busied himself with finding a blank page that satisfied him. He pressed his pencil against the page and looked back up, more in control of himself. “Would you mind if I also took the time to ask you questions about how you are doing as well? I’ve never had a chance like this for proper notes.”

Ash remembered the look in the man’s eye and nodded. If just answering some questions could ease some of whatever drove West forward so painfully he could do it. Not like there was anything else to do for a couple hours.

“I began my reanimation experiments as you would expect – with laboratory mice…”

***

Herbert took a moment to lean back and marvel at his pages of notes. He had figured it would take many more years of work to ever reanimate a person who would feel so forthcoming. Of course, how much of it was actually applicable was for future work to tell; Ashley stuck close to his story of demons and possession and temporary death, any of which would probably impact a reanimation if it were true.

Herbert was wavering on the edge of believing him, which made him angry. It was still nonsense, still impossible, but Ashley believed it so firmly. He didn’t provide many details, but his scars and streaked hair and nervous tics told something of a story.

Time would tell – if these stories were not true Herbert would make sure that Ashley got the help he needed, he owed him that much. But until that point came he would stick to the man like glue and get as much data out of him as possible.

For his part, Herbert had told Ashley about his experiments as sparingly as he possibly could. After all, Ashley didn’t need to know about Dan and Meg and Halsey and certainly not Hill and Hill’s murder…

Ashley seemed satisfied with his stories though, nodding sincerely with regularity. “You have a good memory for this stuff – you didn’t look at your notes once.”

Herbert tilted his head and looked at his notebook again. “It _is_ my life’s work and I take my work very seriously. I mean, I figured out a way to avoid sleep just to keep working.” As he said it Herbert found the notion ridiculous for the first time since he had started it. He blinked at himself and shook his head. Ashley was pushing himself up from the table and gathering up the detritus that had been sitting there all morning.

“Time to get going West; ancient books of otherworldly evil won’t destroy themselves.”

And then he was away, smiling at his own not-joke and Herbert thrust his notebook deep into his case. It was time to see exactly how this book thing was going to play out. One murderous mirror doppelganger could be a fluke – two would be a trend worth investigating.


	6. Chapter 5

Ash had made sure they’d killed a little more time than was strictly necessary, mostly to try and figure out the best way to break into a museum. He hadn’t thought of anything by the time he and West pulled into the empty parking lot. Maybe it wasn’t a very high tech museum? Maybe there weren’t any alarms? This didn’t seem likely and Ash’s guts twisted up inside of him. It might just have to be a smash and grab, as much as he hated the idea.

They approached the dark doors and Ash knew West was watching him carefully, probably waiting to see whatever plan he had. The doors looked thick, solid, and Ash was just opening his mouth to admit that his plan was basically to break things when there was an ominous gust of wind and, with a low chant that came from nowhere, the doors blew open.

Ash shared a look with West and then pulled his gun from his back holster and entered first. All of his nerves were jangling – if the book had opened the doors it wanted them there, and if it wanted them there then they should be getting the fuck out. Ash turned to tell West that he probably should stay outside but the man was already in the museum, looking around with intense interest. Ash frowned at no one but didn’t bother to try and argue with the scientist.

He turned back and closed his eyes briefly, focusing on the insidious whispering. The Necronomicon was somewhere to the right and, not trusting himself to speak, he motioned to West to follow after him. The moment they entered the right wing of museum he wished that they hadn’t. Inside was one of those travelling body exhibits, the ones where humans were sliced into deli-thin sheets or reduced to just a latex web of blood vessels. Ash drew up short but West kept going and Ash could see the smile on his face. Of course this weirdo loved the exhibit.

Of course he didn’t think about what the Necronomicon could do to a room like this.

***

“West!”

Herbert heard the hiss behind him but decided to just ignore it for the moment. He had been wanting to see one of these exhibits but had never really had the chance. Arkham was going to host one next month, but he wasn’t sure he’d be back there by then.

These exhibits were odes to the poetry of the human body, the art of the flesh, which was something that he was deeply familiar with. He didn’t often get sentimental about anatomy, but the body’s workings got to even him occasionally. He could see in an instant that the people behind this exhibit loved each piece of it and crafted it carefully. Gorgeous.

“West!” Ashley whispered again and now Herbert decided to humor him and turn back. He was frozen at the entrance of the gallery and he looked ill, shaking slightly against the bright light of outside. It didn’t seem like he was going to manage any more words and Herbert felt this shared anxiety get its hooks into him. He began to head back to the tall man.

“Ashley?” he said when he was halfway back to the entrance and for a moment he felt other, stranger words try to slip out of his mouth. Herbert clenched his teeth together and kept walking towards his petrified companion.

Almost there, back to the island of life in a room of corpses, and then there was an awful hollow cracking. Herbert turned back to try and catch where the sound had come from but before he could get a bead on the sound Ashley had bulled forward, pushing Herbert behind him with his arm and pulling his shotgun up and training it on the murk.

He didn’t fire though and Herbert swallowed his irritation and peered around Ashley. The cracking was from one of the displays, he could tell that much and the moment he figured out that puzzle the sound expanded to some of the other bodies. One of the models of the circulatory system was fluttering, breaking free of whatever substance held it in place. Herbert’s attention was drawn away from this small movement by a larger one – a bare skeleton was striding forward, arms held out at its sides. Ashley swung his gun towards this figure but he froze again as bits of other displays broke free and flew towards the grinning specter.

The blood was free now and it rocketed towards the bones, wrapping around them like vines filmed at high speed. Muscles, carefully unwound for the edification of museum visitors, reworked themselves around limbs looking for a moment like the world’s most grisly ruffles. The figure drew up short, out of arms reach of the two of them, offering a fine view of all this disparate pieces knitting together into a fleshsuit.

One of the bodies that had been sliced into a series of thin sheets flew impossibly upwards, winding together in the air and settling on the golem’s shoulders like a cloak. Herbert could see the bits of it working within the cape, like tiny pieces of heart contracting in the strange fabric, slivers of intestine undulating and oddly lonely.

He felt sick. The realization came upon him all at once, like a surprise, but he felt sick in a way he never had before. Medical school tested people’s stomachs and Herbert had passed with flying colors, but something about this was so twisted, so _wrong_ that nausea was lapping at his insides.

“Ashley,” he whispered, watching as tiny strips of flesh from the cloak wormed their way up the body and began to meld together on the head. Wisps of hair followed and Herbert tugged weakly at Ashley’s shirt. “Shoot it,” he hissed, one word per tug. The only response was Ashley’s harsh breathing. Herbert peered up, trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. He hadn’t caught sight of it when Ashley made a strangled sound and Herbert snapped his attention back to the golem.

The thing was shaking its head, faster than any human could, blurring the patchwork features. One bone-cracking head whip, than another, then some uncountable number far too fast.

As quickly as the thing had begun it stopped. The face wasn’t some mass of stitched together skin anymore – it was human now, distorted some but recognizable as a person. Recognizable to Ashley as well.

“Cheryl,” he moaned, voice cracking with pain. Herbert couldn’t help but notice that the shotgun’s sight didn’t waver even as Ashley was hurting. He didn’t know who Cheryl was, but this was clearly not good.

“Ashley,” she said, infusing the name with a sickening sweetness and a cruel, cruel edge. “Did you miss me?”

“Cheryl please, no. Not again.” The gun wasn’t even shaking but Ashley’s voice was.

The creature tilted its head at an unnerving angle and stared directly at Herbert, who straightened and glared back. “You have a new friend Ashley? You haven’t buried enough bodies?”

“You bastards,” was all he said in return, practically panting the words out. Herbert wondered if the man was on the verge of tears. “Don’t drag her back into this. Leave us alone!”

“Oh Ashley,” she said, voice dripping with faux-sympathy. “Didn’t you know? You’re gonna join us.”

“Fuck that,” Ashley growled and he finally gripped the stock of the gun tighter.

“Ah ah ah Ashley! You’re being a rude host to your new friend. He doesn’t even know who’s going to kill him, does he?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, no?” She was grinning wickedly now and Herbert felt his hairs stand on end. He shuffled backwards one step, not sure whether to run or to fight. “I think you two really ought to get better acquainted before just walking in like lambs to slaughter, don’t you? Who makes a suicide pact like this without a little sharing first?”

“Wha-“ was all Ashley got out before Cheryl lifted both of her skinless hands and made sudden, violent fists. It was the last thing Herbert saw before a dark force grabbed hold of him and cracked his mind like a whip and he lost himself.

***

It was all fuzzy, like something purposely not thought about but he didn’t have time to really take in that fact because a life was flashing before him and he could not be sure if it was his. The past seemed best forgotten, the imposing authority and the soft love and the senseless loss – all of it packed away tight, the whole self given over to a single-minded task.

It was going well too, progress whipping by like the years, but a snag and a rush to bring his mentor back, to revive the man who had made all of this possible ended it. He was banished from his adoptive home and went to Arkham instead. There he met people and as they flashed by they were cloaked in a mist. He didn’t want to remember them clearly, though there was an occasional clear flash and with each a stab of guilt. One figure was important, so important, but he couldn’t make the features out all at once.

A single face was crystal clear and when he first saw it he thought _Dr. Hill_ and he could practically taste his own venom on his tongue. Hate. He’d never hated anyone as much as he hated this man and Hill hated him too. Good.

Work continued, obsession gnawing at him, but he failed and someone died and he failed again and a blond woman screamed and he felt it in his viscera and pushed the memory away. Failure again and again, it’s all he really had. And now Hill was here! Demanding his work! Taking what was his! His hands wrapped around the shovel’s shaft and he struck. It was achingly familiar, cutting a head off with a shovel, but it was different somehow, more loathing than sorrow. How…

In that moment he was jarred, tossed briefly free of the rapids and he remembered: he wasn’t these memories. No, he was Ash Williams and this wasn’t his life he was living.

It was Herbert’s.

The realization didn’t stem the tide of memory though, but it was enough to allow Ash to keep his head above water and not forget himself again. He fought against the pull but it was still ruthlessly strong and he felt the guilt again as Herbert extended too far, tried too much. He rushed to his creation, his foolish thing, and tried to undo it, tried to save those who needed saving. He succeeded somewhat, but he couldn’t get away – ropes of intestine coiled around him, gagging him, squeezing him. He had just given up hope, resigned himself to death when the over stimulated tissue finally went slack and he laid there for a moment too tired to move.

Then he heard the scream and his blood ran cold and he tore himself from the corpse but it was too late, he was always too late – there was just blood in the hallway and no sign of the fuzzy figures so central to these memories. They were gone and he grabbed his work and tried to banish the guilt and he was gone too…

Ash jerked his head back, eyes snapping open as he finally pulled himself out of whatever mind game Cheryl had plunged him into. He felt like shit, still catching his breath from almost being strangled by a large intestine. He could still taste it on his tongue. Spitting, he tried to sit up, to get moving but there was a sharp pain at his wrist. He looked down and saw what could only be described as flesh cuffs holding him to the metal base of one display. An eye sat nestled in the skin and it glared balefully at him. He tugged again, but it held him fast and Ash cast a glance around to see if he could reach something to help him out. He didn’t see Cheryl or Herbert anywhere.

As soon as he thought of the scientist the silence was shattered by a low, deeply pained keening, like someone trapped in a nightmare. He recognized it instantly. “Herbert.” He whispered the name to himself and it crashed into him in an instant what must be happening.

“Herbert!” Still he kept quiet, not wanting to give away that he was awake, but panic was rising in him. Herbert’s memories had hurt him and they were vague and nowhere near his own experiences…

The keening grew louder and Ash cast around desperately for something to break the cuff. Nothing was at hand so he gave one angry yank of his arm. Adrenaline and reagent coursed through him and with a pained little squeak the cuff tore. Ash pulled again, then leaned down to tear at the thing with his teeth and it fell away under his increased assault.

So he was stronger than he had been. Something to tell Herbert, assuming he could snap the man out of it before he died…

***

There were people around him, warm and loving, and from that first moment something felt off but it was all passing too quickly for him to get proper hold of that thought. No, he was just swept up and pulled forward. Cheryl was on one side and Linda was on the other and Scott and Shelly were up front and it was going to be a fun weekend, relaxing and happy.

The cabin didn’t seem odd in anyway, but the memory of it was quickly swallowed by the dark maw of its basement, flung open by unknown forces. He descended and he shouldn’t have but he couldn’t know that, no way to see ahead. To see the book he carried back up the stairs, the book and the recorder. He played the words stupid _stupid_ and then it happened all too fast and sharp.

His sister was crying, beating at his chest and begging him for help and he tried. He did as much as he thought he needed to, as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough. She was bloody and terrified and he couldn’t help her, couldn’t do a single thing. She turned, twisted and screaming and they fell apart so quickly; wounds and fear and anger bubbling together and Shelly hacked apart in front of him and Linda was gone too and Scott moaning on the couch until he wasn’t and-

And he tried to kill her, he really did, but he couldn’t bear to end her. He paid the price of course – a shredded leg and then the shovel was in his hand and something in it clicked in the back of his mind and pulled at him but all of this was too much and he couldn’t cling to the edge of the thought.

They hated him for reasons he couldn’t divine and he fought and was beaten but he won. He survived the night and stepped into the sun with just a token of his love and the blood of the people dearest to him drenching him and it was terrible but it was also going to be _okay_ …

It hit him then, ripped him free of himself, and the memory blanked out. He could feel something beyond the frosted glass in his mind. It was horrid and dark, he could feel that much, but it was also distant. A protective measure…

He crashed back into his body and then the things were upon him again, laughing at his fear and chasing him. He couldn’t fall asleep but he’d drift and be crushed by incoherent nightmares until he screamed himself awake. Everything collapsed into a feverish singularity – his body betrayed him so he struck off his hand, the fabric of the world laughed at him and all he could do was laugh along because he was ridiculous and pathetic and this was his fault.

Others came and died so fast, too fast to process. He was taken again and the thick protection from memories cracked and hellish light seeped through. Even when he forced himself back (remembering hope and love and Linda) he could still feel the sick darkness curled around his heart and lungs and stomach. They were in him and he knew they were laughing about it. He couldn’t even trust himself now, damn them. One woman stayed alive, just one, and they were going to end this – too much had happened, too much pain and suffering and together they would tear it all apart.

Except his hand killed her, his fault again. He stared into the dark heart of hell made flesh and he could feel his soul searing, curling up at its edges. She pushed through though, just barely hanging on long enough to finish the reading and it was over and he was free finally!

Except.

Except he was pulled backwards, plunged through space and time and the twist and shear of molecules and fibers drove him to the edge of his mind, a place he was becoming far too familiar with.

The past was a blur, painful and gleaming-edged and fevered. His fault though, that was a constant – so much was his fault. They needed his help but didn’t they know? He couldn’t help anyone.

This too pushed against him oddly and he desperately tried to stop remembering and reflect but he couldn’t. The edge of something cut into him, a neon green ribbon, but as soon as he saw it it was gone.

It was the mirror that let him steady himself, finally. He was terrified of it (he was terrified of so many things) but when he smashed it he caught a glimpse of himself - it was not him. Who? That line of questioning was shut down by the dark sickness being ripped from him, given its own form. Not his form but he still couldn’t remember. Then his evil opened its mouth.

“I’m bad Ash,” it hissed and then grinned at him cruelly. Ash? Ash.

He wasn’t Ash.

Herbert remembered himself even as in his memory he was being beaten by his evil double. He wasn’t sure why this was happening, why he was living in Ash’s past, but every time he tried to call up his own memories they were overwhelmed by the ones he was trapped in.

The graveyard, the skeleton army because he was too exhausted to remember, the human theft, the death. There was a war on and it was his fault, same as it ever was. They won though, in the end, and he triumphed over the book again. They had agreed to return him home and it was all he wanted, even if there wasn’t anything there for him. But he hadn’t figured on the sleep, the centuries of it, and it was all nightmares, all weight pressing down on him as it replayed over and over and over and he was _never going to wake up_

***

The keening had gotten worse and was now punctuated with short, ragged screams. Ash felt terrible has he crawled forward. His gun hadn’t been in the wing with him and he was unarmed but he had to do something. He couldn’t just let Herbert suffer like he was and there was still the book to deal with.

Ahead of him a scream morphed into a sob and guilt snaked up under his skin. This wasn’t his fault but it felt like it was. His memories were killing the scientist.

Ash crept around a corner and there they were, Herbert laying on the ground and Cheryl standing over him grinning. Watching him die. His back was arched and his arms were held tight to his sides. Under each hand was a smeary little pool of blood, new drips coming from fists clenched so tight as to break the skin. He shook with every cry but that was the only movement in the room.

Ash could see his shotgun cast off to the left but it was beyond the grim tableau in the center of the room. Time to come up with a different plan. No weapons in the room, not even the makeshift kind, but the gift shop was beyond Cheryl and if he could get her in there maybe he would stand a chance. All he knew for sure was that staying here in the shadows wasn’t going to help anyone. Slowly, quietly, Ash pushed himself to his feet and took a single deep breath. It was time.

***

“Herbert!”

The shout cut through the awful net of memory and Herbert struggled to open his physical eyes and escape. A sliver of sunlight, real sunlight, and he redoubled his efforts. It was slow though, like struggling through water.

“Herbert!” The voice was closer now and shriller and he finally drug his eyes open just in time to see Ash sprinting at the Deadite, knocking into it with one shoulder but not stopping. Cheryl swiped at him, missed and leapt after him growling. Herbert saw Ash throw a look over his shoulder and then scream in very real terror at his sister’s pursuit.

All Herbert was capable of for the moment was short, shallow breaths. His face was wet and his hands hurt and he hadn’t forgotten a single thing he had been forced to live. Ash’s traumatic memories were still there and as he rolled over to try and get up he was overwhelmed by the sense memory of getting beaten with a poker. He let out a small cry and collapsed back to the floor, on his stomach now. There was another shriek and Herbert couldn’t be sure if it was Ash or Cheryl but he knew he couldn’t just lay here. Nearby, nearly within reach, was the shotgun and Herbert blinked and was back in the shed sawing it to its current state.

“Fuck this,” he growled and crawled forward on bloody hands towards the firearm.

***

She had taken the bait. Now he just had to hope that he could find something in the gift shop strong enough to kill her with. And that Herbert would be alright.

Cheryl shrieked and him and narrowly missed a swipe at his back, bringing him firmly back into the now. He put on an extra burst of speed and plunged into the little gift shop. These places usually had statues or something in them, right? A heavy bookshelf loomed up to his right and he made a snap decision – this would do.

She chased in after him and Ash executed a hairpin turn, looping around to the opposite side of the bookshelf. “Please,” he whispered to himself, “please fucking fall!”

He threw himself against the shelf and whether it was desperation or his new strength the thing toppled. Cheryl was caught unaware and couldn’t keep the thing from falling right on her, pinning her at the waist. She let out a chocking cry and coughed up green and blue sludge but she still clawed in his direction, intent on destroying tendons and muscle. Ash hopped backwards, surprised that it had worked so well on the first try. Nothing he ever did worked on the first try.

There was a noise behind him and Ash whipped around, ready for another Deadite, but it was Herbert. The small man was limping forwards in slow, measured steps and his head hung down. Ash considered him, suddenly afraid that he had been possessed. Then Herbert looked up at him, eyes still damp from the involuntary crying and he lifted one arm, offering Ash his shotgun. Herbert’s face was set, grim and cold, but human. Still alive.

Ash couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief and the noise pulled something out of Herbert, who softened just a fraction. Then, behind both of them, a pained moan rose up.

“Ashley?” And Ash felt his stomach drop because it wasn’t a Deadite voice that said it – it was Cheryl as she had been. The demon had fled for just a moment, just to hurt him. He slowly turned back to his trapped sister.

***

She seemed human again, at least down to the base of her neck, where the skin stopped. Herbert didn’t even have to ask about it – the same cruel thing had been done to Linda twice. Sometimes they returned the possessed person but only if it would do some damage to their target.

He hated them, and not just for the things he had remembered them doing to Ash. Seeing the look on his- no, on Ash’s sister’s face just set the hate in deeper. She was crying and confused and she looked to her brother for help without hesitation. Ash was just standing there, cradling his firearm and looking despondent.

“Cheryl,” he said, crouching down to be near her but still keeping out of reach of her hands. “Hey Cheryl.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say.

“Ashley.” Her lower lip quivered but she looked into Ash’s eyes. “Ashley, this isn’t my body, is it?”

“No Cheryl. It’s a bunch of stitched together bodies from a museum exhibit.” He waited a moment, then offered up a tiny “Sorry.”

She patted one hand against the ground in a useless gesture of comfort. “It’s okay Ashley, it’s not your fault.” She peered up and wasn’t crying anymore. “Are you trying to end this Ashley?”

She had stopped crying but Ash seemed ready to start. He nodded in response to her question. She gave one firm little nod.

“Good.”

“Cheryl, I don’t know if that will get you out. I don’t know if I can save you.”

“It’s alright.” Her voice low and comforting. “Won’t know until you try. And if you can keep this from happening to other people you do it Ashley. You do it.” There was steel in her voice and even Herbert felt himself affected. He carefully looked away from the scene, trying to give the siblings some privacy.

“I will. I promise I will Cheryl.”

Then she gagged and Ash cursed and Herbert turned back in time to see the shade of the Deadite enter back into its vessel. Or at least it tried to. Cheryl made a noise, a growl and a choke and the shade was forced away for a moment longer. She locked eyes with Ash.

“I love you Ashley.”

Ash seemed to be trying to respond when the Deadite took control again and spat slime at the two of them. Herbert leapt backwards, away from the spray, but Ash stood firm. He leveled the gun at the trapped monster’s head. He pulled the trigger in the middle of the thing’s garbled shriek and the museum fell silent once again. Ash was shaking slightly and Herbert stepped forward carefully, placing a hesitant hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Ash?” The nickname felt weird on his tongue but it was all he could even think to call him now.

Ash waved his stump, trying to clear the air of something incorporeal. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” He turned suddenly as if seized by a thought. “Are you alright Herbert?”

As strange as it had been to say Ash it was stranger to hear him say Herbert. He wondered what the taller man’s mental journey had been like in the recesses of his memories. He wondered how much Ash had seen.

Ash was still waiting for an answer, so Herbert took quick stock. “I need to bandage my hands up, but I’m alright.”

Ash’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Then let’s get the book and get the fuck out of here.” He lifted his head, peered around, and as he watched Herbert realized something was wrong. Words that had been pressing on his mind were suddenly far more remote than they had been when he’d entered the museum. They looked at one another.

“It’s gone?”

Ash nodded grimly. “The bastard got this one too.”


	7. Chapter 6

Ash had to be certain, so he took off running back into the recesses of the museum. Through the decimated body exhibit and straight on into another wing, this one displaying information on, and artifacts of, death and burial from around the globe. He would have been impressed if this sort of thing didn’t make him want to curl up into a fetal position. A quick jog around the room revealed that the Necronomicon’s display case was untouched but empty. Ash half-expected to find a mocking note, but there was no sign his double had been there beyond the missing book.

He walked back to the gift shop slower than he had left it, searching for the next call in his mind. Further east. Why take the books if the awful things were aching to be read? Where were they going that they couldn’t call to him? He didn’t understand what was happening in the slightest.

He was back in the body room and the exhibits that were still standing caught his eye. Names of muscles rose up unbidden in his mind and he shook his head to try and clear it. Herbert’s memories were cooling off, drifting out of the front of his mind, but clearly they could still be triggered. Ash dragged himself out of the room and kept going. He needed to make sure that Herbert was alright. It was probably time to find somewhere to leave the scientist.

***

Ash had thrust the shotgun into his hands before running off and Herbert was gripping it too tightly for a man with wounded palms. The memories that had been force upon him were becoming more abstract, settling down like silt in a troubled pond. Fear reminded though, clear and sharp. Ash was afraid of _everything_ he realized as he stared around the empty room and tried not to blink. How did he manage anything with this much terror weighing down on his guts? How did he step into places where he knew the book was and try to stop it? How did he keep fighting?

Herbert could feel the answer winding through him as he stood there shaking. Because he had to. Because there was no one else. He was still lost in thought when Ash reappeared, shaking his head as he came.

“Nothing,” he said, flat and unsurprised. “I don’t know what the fuck it going on.”

Herbert reached out to hand the gun back, hating how much his hands were shaking. Instead of taking the firearm Ash seized his wrist and examined the bleeding palm. “I’ve got a first aid kit in the trunk. Let’s get you bandaged up.”

Herbert allowed himself to be led outside, back into the sunlight. The lack of shadows was comforting. Ash popped the trunk and pulled out a length of bandage. Herbert held his hand out, expecting to be handed the gauze but instead Ash wound it up around his hand. It was snug and practiced and Herbert looked down, impressed.

“Other hand,” Ash said and Herbert turned it over without fuss.

“You’re good at this,” was all he managed to come up with.

Ash looked up and smiled just a little. “Self-taught,” he explained, looking away quickly. The smile twitched a moment longer on his lips and then died. Of course he was.

Hands freshly wrapped Herbert moved to stand beside the passenger side door, but when he turned Ash was still standing at the rear of the car, leaning against the open trunk lid. When he finally closed the trunk and looked up Herbert didn’t like the look in his eyes.

“I think it’s time we had a talk.”

***

Ash could see Herbert’s face shutting down as soon as he had spoken. It didn’t matter how much the scientist didn’t want to hear it – they needed to talk now before things went any farther.

“Should I drop you off at a bus stop or an airport?”

“Drop me off?” For a man so smart Herbert was good at playing dumb.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about Herbert. It’s gotten too dangerous for me to risk your life.”

“You’re not risking my life – I am. Every decision I’ve made is my own and I plan to continue deciding.”

“You’re hurt now, and they can get it through wounds-“

“I won’t repeat myself over and over Ash. I am staying with you.”

Ash ground his teeth together and tried to contain his temper. “Data collection isn’t worth your life!”

Herbert shot him a venomous look. “You and I clearly differ in matters of science. Besides, what if you need more doses of reagent?”

“Then give me the stuff! I can figure out how to get it in here – it can’t be that hard!”

“You can’t just stick needles into yourself haphazardly-“

“I wouldn’t be doing that; I remember how to inject things.” Ash’s voice grew quiet. He wasn’t ready to broach the subject of the shared memories and if Herbert’s face was any indication he wasn’t ready either. Ash tried to start again. “I just… I don’t want anything to happen to you-“

“It’s not your fault!” Herbert’s voice was surprisingly forceful and Ash was startled. Herbert also seemed thrown off and smoothed his hands down the front of his coat. “It’s not your fault,” he said again, voice at its more normal tone. “None of this is your fault, especially not what has happened to me.”

The words were like a punch in the gut and Ash’s good hand tightened around the door handle of his car. “Herbert…”

Herbert brought one hand up, a sharp end to the conversation. “I am staying with you until this whole thing is over with Ash. Those books need to be destroyed and you shouldn’t have to bear that burden alone.”

Ash stopped breathing and just stared. Herbert was picking at something on his coat, seemingly unaware of the magnitude of his statement. Intensity still steamed off of the man, even in his quiet moments and, for a fraction of a second, Ash thought they just might stand a chance.

He unlocked the doors and captured that seed of hope in his chest. He couldn’t keep it from growing but he could keep it safe. He tried to keep composed, together. He could feel Herbert watching him, could almost sense the single eyebrow creeping up in an eternal question. No, he couldn’t keep himself from feeling hope no matter how many hard lessons he’d been forced to take. Best to just try and roll with it.

“We should get going then,” he said, sounding far calmer than the roil of emotion within him. “It’s going to be a long drive.”


	8. Chapter 7

Herbert was leaning his forehead against the car’s cool window and trying to ignore all the sideways glances that Ash kept throwing his way. The man seemed concerned about him, but Herbert didn’t feel that he needed to discuss what had happened. He was good at forcing the past very firmly into the past. Still, the sun was going down and sometimes the dying rays caught the edge of something and flashed and he had to suppress a shudder. How one man went through life so unnerved by the edge of things he didn’t know.

_Two men now_ he thought with a small aimless scowl.

Still, the experience was receding further and further and each shudder was smaller and smaller. After a few hours he almost felt like himself again. Just himself. Once he was secure in that he hesitantly reached down into the memories to see if he could engage with them without becoming overwhelmed. He got in one instance, two, and then there was a small flood and he pressed his head into the window. The tactile sensation brought him back.

“Herbert?” Ash said, sparing a glance from the road. “You alright?”

“Just experimenting.”

Ash nodded, almost sagely. “I really should have guessed that.”

Herbert smiled a little out at the evening. Then, a moment too late to be tactful, he turned to Ash. “And you are fine? The memories aren’t bothering you?”

Ash shook his head. “No. I mean, I’m not messing with them, but also they’re… vague. More impressions than actual instances you know?” Ash shook his head again, this time at himself. “What am I even asking? Of course you know.”

Herbert wasn’t sure what exactly to say. “Every important thing from the past gets written in my notebook. Or recorded.”

Ash’s face was unreadable. “Just the science then?”

Herbert leaned back into the passenger seat, feeling defensive even as he knew that there had been nothing accusatory in Ash’s tone. “There is nothing else.” Too late he remembered that Ash had seen the picture of Dan and Meg, but he kept silent, hoping his companion had already forgotten the token of sentimentality.

“I wish I could make my memories as foggy as yours.”

Herbert rolled the statement around in his head, wondering if he should even pursue the implications. On the one hand he didn’t want to dig too deeply into their shared experience – loath though he was to hesitate this had been too strange and too personal. But on the other hand what else was there to do while driving all night?

“There was a… a barrier inside of your memory. When you were possessed. It was weakened, cracked, on the second possession.”

Ash didn’t look away from the road, but Herbert could see a single eyebrow creeping up in disbelief. “Really? Doesn’t feel that way when I’m reliving it. And my nightmares are pretty accurate.”

“You don’t have any defense against it?”

Ash squinted into the darkness then shook his head slightly. “I guess I must, since there are sometimes that I’m not thinking about it. It’s kind of always there but not always upfront.”

“And you say mine were foggy?”

“Like an out of focus camera. I couldn’t tell much about anyone except in flashes. It was mostly just feelings.”

Herbert squirmed in his seat. If he didn’t want to talk about memories he really didn’t want to talk about the emotions behind them. “Well, that can’t be right. Hadn’t you noticed? I don’t have feelings.”

Ash laughed and Herbert blinked at his own little joke. He hadn’t meant to tell one – it just sort of spilled out. They both got quiet again and Herbert went back to leaning against the window and thinking. Thinking about the books and the beasts that came out of them. Thinking about how his research mirrored the demons and how different they were ultimately. It could be possible to fuse his research and the rites and achieve true immortality but even as he thought it his skin crawled. He thought his research was worth absolutely everything – it was not worth that.

His dark thoughts were interrupted by Ash clearing his throat. “We’re going to get a motel at the next exit.”

***

Ash had very carefully, very deliberately not affixed a question mark to his sentence. He was hoping he could sneak it by the scientist somehow, slide it right in to their itinerary without comment. There was a moment of disbelieving silence and he realized he should not have even mentioned it.

“I thought we had something we were doing?”

“We do, but I just need a little time.”

Herbert made an irritated sound. “What for?”

Ash sighed even though he knew the sound would likely put Herbert on the defense. “We may not need to sleep but we need to shower. I do anyway. You good at washing in public restrooms?”

Ash could see his passenger looking upwards and he seemed to be thinking about the question quite seriously. “I don’t think I am.”

“Is that an experiment you’d like to run?”

Again he was considering. Did he know how maddening he was? He had to know on some level, right? “No, I think we can skip that one for now. I see your point.”

Ash nodded, glad the disagreement had been short lived. “We’ll leave early, as early as we can. I also want to see if I can get a bead on where the other books are, the missing ones.”

_Because_ , he thought but didn’t say, _because I’m worried about where he’s taking them_. Because he felt like he should have some concept of what his double was doing since they were connected. Because he felt like he was failing again and it frightened him.

Herbert was nodding in the dark, seemingly oblivious to Ash’s inner turmoil. “Maybe I can help with that – you’re tracking them through the words right?”

Ash frowned at the confirmation that the Necronomicons were speaking to Herbert was well. Still, another mind on the problem couldn’t hurt, especially the driven mind of Herbert. “Yeah. It’s kind of hard to explain but there’s a pull I can zero in on to figure out the locations.”

Herbert’s face screwed up in concentration. He held the pose for a beat, two, then his eyes snapped open and he frowned. “I don’t get any sense of place. The pull’s there it’s just too vague to be useful.” He was scowling so hard that Ash could see it even out of the corner of his eye. He could also see his passenger’s lips twitching ever so slightly and Ash, unthinking, reached out with his stump. He bumped Herbert clumsily in the shoulder and the man pulled back in surprise, blinking but not angry. The lack of irritation meant there were two surprised people in the car.

“The words,” Ash said and even as he thought of them they rose up and swirled dangerously around his tongue. He swallowed the impulse down and caught Herbert’s eyes. “Just be careful with them, even just thinking about them.”

Herbert’s face was a mask, but he gave a curt little nod and Ash turned back to the road and concentrated on driving to clear his mind. The silence lay on top of everything and Ash almost started speaking twice before finally finding the best sentiment he could. “You get used to it after awhile, so don’t feel bad.”

Herbert didn’t move or acknowledge him but Ash wasn’t the least bit surprised. This fit his currently established behavior pattern. Ash paused and considered that thought, turning it over and over in his mind. The two of them had probably been more impacted by the memory shit Cheryl had pulled than they had guessed.

“There’s a motel at this exit,” Herbert said, startling Ash.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, embarrassed at how much he had jumped, even though Herbert hadn’t reacted. A few minutes later they pulled into the place and it looked weathered but not like a murder motel, which was really the only thing Ash wanted to avoid. Roaches and scratchy towels he could handle.

Herbert was out of the car almost before it had stopped. He turned back and Ash felt another stab of worry at his blank features. “Come on,” he said and even his voice was flat. “Let’s get this over with.” Ash followed after his retreating back and wondered if there was something he could do to help the scientist or if whatever this mood was just needed to run its course.


	9. Chapter 8

Herbert had marched ahead lost in focus. He was used to bending his whole will against one problem. This time, however, the problem was not scientific in nature. No, this time the problem was the influence of the Necronomicon.

Ash had said that he’d get used to it, but he didn’t want to – it weighed down on him, even this far away. It pressed down on his mind, ugly and squat and rotting. He could almost feel it seeping in further and poisoning his blood.

Ridiculous. All of this was ridiculous. He had seen it, experienced it, was feeling it now, but it was still ridiculous. His palms stung just a bit through his bandages. It had tried to kill him. It had been watching him die. So he had to believe it – it was real after all.

But it was tripping him up, twining around him, and it left him feeling far more helpless than he was used to. It didn’t matter how he pushed he couldn’t get the Necronomicon out of his mind. Normally he was in full control of himself; it was a point of pride. This whole experience had ripped that away from him.

Again he considered his companion. No one would accuse Ash of being the most stable person, but he handled all this uncertainty with a relatively impressive aplomb. He had caught up and passed Herbert and was even holding the door open. Herbert passed through and realized too late that he should have acknowledged the act in some way.

That wasn’t him, that wasn’t a thing he did or worried about. So many things large and small that were askew, off-kilter. He clenched his teeth and tightened his fists until the pain reminded him to loosen them. He was Herbert West. He was in control of himself. He was stronger than this thing. He would not be poisoned.

Outside of himself Herbert thought he heard the edge of a question and looked up, blinking. “Hm?” The noise came out in a way that didn’t sound familiar and the anger that was burning through him didn’t abate.

***

Ash held still and just watched Herbert. Anxiety was sneaking up his neck and settling on his scalp. The man’s voice was surprisingly light but his face was like a thunderhead. The disconnect pressed against ingrained triggers in Ash’s brain but it still didn’t quite gel. Herbert was still human, for one thing. Ash quietly hoped this was just another aspect of the scientist’s intensity.

“They just have one available room, two beds. That’s fine, right?”

“Oh,” Herbert said and a bit of the tension drained out of him. “That’s fine with me.”

Ash smiled at him. “I thought it would be but I felt like I should check.” He turned back to the clerk and pulled the wallet from his pocket. “That will be fine.”

“Oh!” he heard behind him again, more focused now. He heard Herbert patting at his coat and then pulling his bag open. He waved his hand over his shoulder, dismissing the action.

“I got it, don’t worry.” Ash wasn’t worrying about credit card bills right now – survival came first. He wouldn’t have to pay the bills if he died doing this, the thinnest silver lining there might ever have been. He’s take any scrap of silver he could get.

Ash picked his duffle up off the floor and took the room keys with a nod. The walk to the room was short and he quickly threw his bag on the bed that was up against the wall. He paid for the room, he gets to pick his bed. Herbert had followed in slowly after, frowning all the while. Ash still had no idea what he could do to help the scientist, so he decided to just forge ahead.

“I’m going to shower first – I’m pretty fast.”

Herbert just nodded in response and lowered himself onto the other bed. He was still wrapped up in his own mind. Ash couldn’t worry about it, not right now.

He had to tug the door a bit to get it closed. Cheap construction. The bathroom was small and spare but the water was very hot so it was satisfactory. Ash worried at first about how the water might interact with his neck wounds, but all that happened was that a few flakes of red and green sloughed off and swirled around the drain. Good to his word Ash showered quickly and toweled quickly and really only slowed down to look at his neck. The gluey reagent had left his wounds looking smaller than they actually were, almost like survivable rips. Still, he buttoned his shirt all the way up and carefully adjusted the collar for maximum coverage. People could overlook an amazing amount of stuff but he didn’t need to push it.

***

Herbert was startled out of his mental struggle by the bathroom door being pushed open a little too hard. The thing must stick. Ash stumbled out after the door, off-balance with all his force. His hair was glistening with moisture and Herbert averted his eyes. Dan had never taken the time to properly dry his hair either.

“You’re up,” Ash said and he leaned against the sliver of wall by the bathroom door. Herbert noted the position and let his eyebrow ask the question.

“You’ve only got the one set of clothes, right? I’m going to do laundry – need to get the blood out at the very least.” He paused a moment and made a face. “My blood, right? My blood.”

Herbert wanted to protest but it sounded sensible enough. Still he couldn’t keep a question down. “You know how to get blood out of clothes?”

“Yeah, my sister taught me.” Herbert must have looked incredulous because Ash’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t think of a reason my sister might know how to get blood out of clothes? Weren’t you some kind of medical student?”

Herbert stiffened. “A researcher in matters of life and death.”

“Oh, excuse me Doctor Fancypants,” Ash said, but he was smiling a little. Herbert slipped into the bathroom and handed out his clothes all while trying to not think about it too much. The water was nearly scalding and it did help his head, the pounding drowning out the thick whisper of the Necronomicon. It was so helpful that he spend far longer than usual in the shower. He really did not want to return to the world outside of this discolored tile where darkness preyed upon his thoughts.

Eventually he couldn’t put it off any longer and he finished and toweled off. Herbert realized that he didn’t have any clothes to change into so he hesitated slightly and then wrapped the towel around his waist and slowly stepped into the main room, hoping Ash was back with the laundry.

He squinted out into the room and a movement caught his eye. A tall figure, dark hair, and even as he knew better he couldn’t stop his tongue.

“Dan?”

***

Ash heard Herbert’s voice, unusually small, but he didn’t turn. The name pinged off of his mind like the clear tone of a tuning fork. Dan? He mentally tucked the name away and felt it slide in next to one of the important but indistinct figures from the past.

But it was better to let Herbert think that he hadn’t heard. “Your clothes are on the bed. Still warm from the dryer even.”

Herbert made a noise and Ash heard the door close again. He went back to listening for the books. He knew where the next one was – careful mediation and a map app revealed a large private estate and a little more digging revealed an older man who fancied himself a world explorer. He was even out on another “expedition” looking for more rarities to add to his collection. Ash couldn’t help but smile at how lucky he was with avoiding getting innocents involved.

There was a sudden sour twist in his stomach. Other than Herbert, of course.

The bathroom door clattered open again. Think of the devil and he shall appear, still straightening his tie. Ash looked at him and his guts twisted up worse.

“I should leave you somewhere,” he blurted out.

Herbert’s face was cool, calm. He’d regained some of his normal composure and didn’t seem to be weighed down quite as much by whatever had been bothering him. “I would be very impressed if you could.”

“Yeah, it’s not like I can ditch you while you’re sleeping or something.”

Quiet hung between them for a moment and Ash closed his eyes and searched one last time for the missing books that were beyond calling him. Still no good, even with the quiet and the stillness. He couldn’t hear even a whisper of them. Just the three that were left.

When Ash opened his eyes Herbert was sitting on his bed, surprisingly patient. Ash just shook his head at his companion.

“No dice on the missing books, but the next one is close by.”

“Are you ready to go?”

Ash scooped up his duffle. “No point in staying around here.”


	10. Chapter 9

He hadn’t been lying when he said close by. The guy behind the desk hadn’t even batted an eye when the two of them had checked out only a few hours after checking in. He had probably seen stranger before and would see stranger again. At least, stranger as far as he knew.

The drive was silent again, not that Ash minded. He was working on getting himself mentally prepared to face down the book and he got the feeling that Herbert was doing the same. Maybe being ready for an attack would make things go smoother. Maybe.

Should he put on the chainsaw when they got there? It felt sensible to put on the chainsaw.

The old estate was grand but not exactly up to date, and even if it had been the gates swung open on their own like a hungry maw. Again Ash felt his stomach sink but there was no going back at this point. He had to destroy some of these books – he couldn’t just let Evil Ash get away with whatever he was plotting.

The old house was looming and its dark windows were either eyes or mouths, Ash couldn’t be sure from moment to moment. He didn’t know which was worse. As he pulled the car to a stop every door and window he could see pushed outward like something was trying to get out. Next to him Herbert paled a little, so Ash knew it wasn’t just in his head. That was sort of a comfort and also the worst thing that could be happening.

Ash parked haphazardly in the gravel drive and had to hiss out Herbert’s name to keep him from heading towards the house as soon as he was out of the car. He frowned but drew up next to Ash at the trunk.

“I just need something real quick.” He jiggled the trunk lid and it popped open. He only pawed at the contents before he uncovered what he was looking for. The chainsaw. The discolored metal thing caused Herbert to suck in a surprised breath.

“What do you intend to do with that?”

“Give me a hand and I’ll show you.” Ash gestured to the dented toolbox nestled in a filthy tarp and Herbert yanked it out. While he did that Ash fished out the metal cuff he needed and snapped it to the end of his stump. Herbert was yanking at the lid of the box and his scowl was deepening with each tug. “Sorry about the rust,” Ash said and Herbert turned back to him and watched as he laced leather straps from his harness to the cuff.

Herbert looked perplexed for a moment, then understanding dawned slowly on his features. “Weight distribution… Are you going to wear that thing?”

“What, are you telling me you don’t remember this?”

Herbert blinked and the understanding intensified. “Oh!” He tilted his head and squinted at nothing and Ash could almost see the offending memory wavering before him in the air. “Not sure how I managed to forget that one.”

Ash shrugged. “I mean, there are more important things in there.” Herbert must have eyed the cuff (or possibly just accessed the memory) because he handed Ash the screwdriver he needed to secure the chainsaw. Ash pulled back and flexed his arm, testing the weight and the balance and whether the chainsaw pullstart would catch reliably on his harness fork. Everything seemed to be in good working order. He nodded at Herbert, who nodded in return.

They approached the front of the building carefully and Ash could see the windows breathing in and out. They only waited at the front door for a moment before it opened itself violently.

“After you,” Herbert said quietly and he had the good sense to sound slightly nervous.

“Let’s get this over with,” Ash grumbled and stepped into the darkness.

***

Ash was just marching into the dark so Herbert decided to grope for a light switch. He found one and Ash looked back over his shoulder. He looked bashful. “That’s a good idea,” he mumbled. Herbert didn’t blame him for not looking though – one hand was a chainsaw and the other had a gun in it. Ash was busy.

Once they were both all the way inside the house the front slammed itself closed and both Herbert and Ash jumped. Ash whirled around and Herbert, somewhat unthinking, reached out and shook the handle violently. It held firm.

“Can’t go out that way,” Herbert said but Ash was shaking his head before the thought was even finished.

“This saw can go through doors if it comes to that. We should go fast though.” Then he began down the hall again, steps slightly slower and more careful. Herbert followed close behind, trying to gauge how close was too close. Memories of fights hazed up in his mind and he knew Ash’s arm span. At least these memories were better than the Necronomicon’s words in his mind.

The pressure was bad, almost worse than it had been the last two times. His throat was itching oddly and his palms were itching more normally. He kept glancing down at the bandages and looking for tale tell signs of possession. Not that he knew if he could catch it before it happened. Not that he knew if he could do anything about it if he caught it. He seemed fine so far though.

Ash led the way, twisting and turning through the halls. Herbert stayed on light switch duty, which served as a welcome distraction. Sometimes Ash would pause, probably getting his bearings, but the trip didn’t take long. They found themselves in a classic wealthy library. The paneling was dark wood and the shelves were stocked with volumes that seemed both anonymous and old. Herbert wondered how many of these books had actually been read and weren’t just for show. A fireplace loomed on one wall and Ash made for it instantly.

Herbert didn’t even have to ask – Ash offered up an explanation. “I want to have a fire ready to throw the thing into. Shouldn’t take more than a minute. Can you look for the book while I do this?”

“Of course,” Herbert said to Ash’s hunched back and he was happy to get that much out without choking on evil words. The mental fog was thick and he squinted even though the library’s air was clear. The pull did seem stronger from one corner and Herbert approached it cautiously. There, on a dark wood desk, was a glass case and inside was the book.

It was the first one he had seen up close and, against his better judgment, he leaned in towards it. Herbert was very good at ignoring his better judgment. The skin was wrinkled, cracked, but it was all of one piece, one single face. The empty eyeholes gaped and the mouth was a hollow silent scream. His own skin crawled to look at flesh so old and still preserved somehow. He was struck by the idea that is was somehow still alive and that this was immortality, not what he was working towards.

He hated the thing under the glass. The case wasn’t locked and Herbert opened it quickly and flinched only slightly before picking up the book. Best to destroy this thing as quickly as possible.

His throat felt gluey. His palms itched.

Ash was still facing the fire place but the fire was burning brightly inside of it. Certainly hot and fierce enough to burn an old book. Herbert marched right up on Ash, intending fully to throw the thing into the fire without delay. But somewhere in his last step something rose up inside of him, thick and hot. He blinked, shuddered, and pushed himself up against the mantle. His insides roiled again and now the edges of his vision were fading out.

“Herbert?” Ash said, voice full of concern, but he sounded far away. Herbert heaved a shaky breath and tried to push himself away from the fireplace, but his fingers were nerveless. The book dropped against the mantle.

Suddenly, sharply, Herbert was forced out of his body. It was like a car accident and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and he crashed through the windshield of his mind and then he was in hell. He had had a taste of it in Ash’s mind but now it was all around him. Sharp and burning and awful, screams and blood and horrid laughter. It was all wound up within him and without him and his soul retched. He felt a stirring in his body, remote and yet also feverishly close. As torments closed in around him he felt his lips move and felt himself speak.

“Ashley…”

***

“Ashley…” The voice was Herbert’s, yes, but it was tinged with a sweetness that the scientist had never displayed, maybe even never thought of. But Herbert still wasn’t facing him, so Ash had a fragment of hope.

“Herbert,” he said as calmly and steadily as he could. As he spoke he slowly backed away from the still Herbert. Too late he realized his gun was still on the floor where he had placed it while building the fire. Except now he was thinking about shooting Herbert and he wasn’t sure that he could. He’d never been good at this part, not if he knew the dead.

Because he was pretty sure that’s what Herbert was. All of his skin was crawling and the edges of his vision and hearing were wavering ever so slightly. Signs he could never forget.

The scientist was still leaning against the mantle, head hanging low. He made a brief, guttural sound and then was silent. “Ashley,” his voice came again and there was no doubt. Herbert was gone.

The Deadite wearing Herbert’s body turned around. Its eyes were the milk while of the dead, its skin sallow and sunken. As it tugged the bandages from its hands Ash could see the dark lines radiating from the wounds on Herbert’s palms like the shattering of glass. Its hair blew gently in some unnatural wind. And it smiled, wide and showing all its teeth and it was so incongruous on that face.

“Let him go,” was all Ash trusted himself to say.

“Oh Ashley,” the Deadite responded, almost laughing. “Why would I do that?”

Ash ignored the question. “Get out of him.”

The Deadite just responded with a single raised eyebrow and that expression was so familiar on Herbert’s face that fury surged through Ash. He brought his saw up between the two of them and let his anger show on his features and in his body language. Maybe he could intimidate the thing.

It didn’t seem to be working. In fact, Herbert’s head tilted a bit and the Deadite half-turned from Ash back to the mantelpiece. Then it picked up the book, which was writhing with a new life. The Deadite held the thing close to its ear and Ash could see the book’s lips moving rapidly. Strange, soft words were spilling out of it too fast for Ash to even latch onto let alone to comprehend. Then the book’s long warty tongue extended and traced the edge of Herbert’s ear and ran up the side of his face. Ash shuddered at the sight but the Deadite didn’t respond in the slightest. Instead it reached up over the mantle and pulled a sheet away from a square form on the wall. It was a mirror, large and old, and the Deadite leaned the book up against its slightly tarnished surface. Then it turned back to face Ash fully. It was grinning awfully.

“I knew I could trust you Ashley. Thank you ever so much for not cutting me down while I took care of that little task.” Blood rushed to Ash’s face and he bared his teeth a little. Frustration was winding its way around his anger. What was the play here?

The thing was regarding him now, far more thoughtfully than any Deadite ever had. Except, maybe, Evil Ash.

“He wants you alive.”

The Deadite sounded skeptical, slightly confused, slightly angry. The tone gave Ash pause. “What?”

The thing shrugged. “He didn’t tell me why. Mores the pity – I might have actually followed that order if he had.” As soon as it finished the sentence it lunged forward faster than Ash could react to. It dug its fingers into his chest and curled them around the straps of the harness. Then it pulled, snapping the leather and taking small chunks of skin as well. Ash yelped and staggered away. The chainsaw on his hand was terribly heavy without the harness to support it and he was struggling to keep from falling completely. The thing was laughing and Ash gathered his strength and threw himself behind a couch to hide. His increased strength surged through him and he tore the cuff away from his stump, dropping the saw to the floor. The clatter of it drew the Deadite’s attention.

“Come on out Ashley – why delay the inevitable?”

Ash was ignoring him, twisting one way and then the other to try and find something to use as a weapon. There was a lamp on the sofa’s side table and that would have to do. Ash scrabbled forward and seized the thing, ripping it from the table and winging it at the mirror over the fire. Hopefully he’d hit the book.

The mirror shattered and the Deadite turned around in concern, reaching out towards the falling shards. Ash took the opportunity to bolt for the light switch and turn it off. Deadites were no better in the dark than humans and he’d rather that it couldn’t see him coming. Behind him the Deadite hissed a wordless question and Ash moved as quickly and quietly as he could along the ground, back towards the room’s stuffed shelves.

The Deadite turned back to the room, lit from behind by the fire. Ash still had a clear view of it. Maybe he could hit it with some books or something. Maybe he could get close enough to subdue the thing and try and get Herbert out. Maybe any of this shit would work like he wanted and he wouldn’t be forced to dismember the scientist. To kill another friend.

The realization would have given him pause if he wasn’t solely focused on the figure in front of the fire. The Deadite was surveying the room slowly, taking in a full sweep silently. Then, in the fragment of firelight leaking around it, Ash could see the thing smile again.

“Pretty clever Ashley, but you shouldn’t have left me by the fire. Let’s turn the lights up, shall we?” As soon as it finished speaking it plunged Herbert’s left hand into the fire. Ash bit back a sound and ducked lower. A moment later a burning hunk of wood was flung violently into one of the bookshelves. Ash felt sparks rain down on him and some of the books caught, began to smolder. Ash took a shaky breath. Another burning log flew through the dark room and bounced off of a large window before settling into the folds of the rich curtains. They too began to smoke. Ash could hear the popping of cooking meat and smelled burning flesh. He shuddered all over, once, and fought to keep control of himself. He wanted to sprint at the thing, to wrestle it to the ground and keep it from putting anything else in the fire, but that wasn’t going to save his neck and it wasn’t going to keep Herbert alive.

“Hmmm,” the thing said casually, voice not carrying a trace of pain. “I still can’t see you Ashley. Should I light the room up some more?”

Ash quickly grabbed a book off of the shelf and threw it low, across the room and into the opposite shelf. The Deadite’s head turned to look where the sound had come from, which gave Ash a small opening. He grabbed another book and rushed forward, knowing he would probably only get one swing and hoping that he could knock the thing out. He took one, bounding step, another, and then the Deadite turned back towards him. Time slowed down. Ash swung the hardcover and for a second he was sure he had it, but he had misjudged the wiry man. The Deadite ducked under his swing and, while he was still off balance, lunged forward.

Herbert was a small man, but his possessed body still had enough weight and force to knock Ash backwards, bearing him down to the hardwood floor. Ash tucked his head forward to avoid hitting it, but as soon as his back smacked into the cool surface a hand curled around his face and slammed his head firmly into the floor. Ash’s vision swam with the force of the blow, but he could still make out the Deadite above him, straddling him, digging its knees into his sides. In the growing light of the multiple fires Ash could see the cruel grin on Herbert’s face. Ash shook his head, tried to rally, but the Deadite slammed his head against the floor again.

Ash got his hand up, tried to push the Deadite off, but it was weaving around and avoiding his blows. With inhuman speed Herbert’s hands clawed across his face, neat fingernails leaving ragged gashes. Then the blows came quicker, one strike leading into another, claws alternating with fists. The assault was brief, but Ash felt the crack of bone and the thick flow of blood. One punch was with Herbert’s burned hand and the blistering skin on it split and Ash was splattered with yellow, sticky fluid.

Desperate Ash shoved up with both arms. The Deadite caught both of his wrists and dug its nails into them viciously, shredding the flesh. Ash yanked his arms apart to try and break the tight grip but this just brought the Deadite closer to his face. Its grin barely broke as it snapped possessed jaws. The teeth just managed to catch the edge of Ash’s cheek and he thrust his arms back together tearing that face away from his own.

Herbert’s face was twisted into an awful grin still, teeth slightly stained with blood and reagent. Ash was focusing on not blacking out as he bled from his face and the back of his head and both of his wrists. “Herbert,” he said and his voice was somehow firm. “Herbert. C’mon Herbert.” Drawing the scientist out seemed like his best chance at this point – the Deadite had more energy than he did and had done a better job of keeping him disoriented and hazy than any other demon he’d ever encountered. “Come back Herbert. Herbert”

Though it seemed impossible the grin got wider. “Ashley,” it said, soft and sweet, “I’m going to tear your throat out.”

***

It was like hot stinging blood kept dripping steadily into his eyes but he couldn’t wipe it away because the things had seized his arms and were plucking him apart fiber by fiber. Their fingers were red hot and they laughed as he screamed. He had given up on screaming words an eternity ago; now it was just sound to try and capture the pain and the terror. Sounds alone weren’t good enough. Nothing would ever be good enough.

He could see though, could feel his body moving completely apart from his will. He couldn’t twist away from the sight of the carnage the thing in his body was wreaking. The things around him laughed when he tried.

Then, though the heat and the screams and the laughter he heard it. His name.

“Herbert.”

Herbert West, lost and in pain and outside of his body, focused. Through eyes he was no longer controlling he could see Ash laying beaten below him.

“C’mon Herbert.” In his vision Ash’s face swam, drifting between that and Dan’s face. The things around him were laughing harder, almost hysterical at his uncertain perception, and maybe at Ash trying to pull him out.

“Come back Herbert. Herbert.”

Herbert looked into those eyes and was struck by a realization – Ash wasn’t looking at the Deadite in his body. Ash was looking at him. Staring straight through to where he was outside of his body. Looking for the human being so deeply buried.

He felt the Deadite twist his lips into words. “Ashley. I’m going to tear your throat out.”

The demon sounded so certain. Disgust and rebellion rose up in Herbert. Ash and Dan’s features mixed together before him and all he knew was that he was not going to tear out the throat of either of those men. No. Never.

Herbert gathered himself up and pulled, hard, ripping his conception of his limbs away from his tormentors. The mocking around him turned suddenly into feral cries of alarm. _Good_ he thought to himself as he curled up around his center. _Good_.

Then he mentally reached out, found the force that both connected him to his body and had forced him out of it. Around him the alarm was gathering itself into some sort of haphazard agency. He didn’t have a lot of time. He seized the connection as tightly as he had ever grasped anything and _pushed_

***

Ash had tried but it didn’t seem like it was working. At this point he wasn’t sure that he could mount a more violent defense. He had to try though and he gathered up what remained of his strength.

Then, above him, something changed. The grin on Herbert’s face wavered, collapsed into confused worry and then set into grim determination. The Deadite’s eyes snapped shut forcefully and then, after a moment, fluttered open. Ash watched as the milk white of its eyes swirled away like a dissipating fog. The eyes were human again, unfocused and blurry, but Herbert’s. He had done it.

Herbert screamed just once, voice a thick mix of horror and pain and then he passed out, whole body going limp and collapsing on top of Ash. For his part, Ash let out a cry of relief and sat up quickly, ignoring the wave of dizziness. All he wanted to do was collapse too, but that wasn’t an option. The room around him was rapidly brightening and filling with smoke. Of course they had managed to set the house on fire.

Ash cast a quick look around and located his chainsaw and shotgun. He also listened, but the pull of the book was gone. His doppelganger must have snatched it away in the confusion, as usual. Crawling low below the smoke Ash grasped the saw and threw it through the large bay window, smashing the glass. The gun followed. The now gaping hole in the window served two purposes – a quick means of escape and a vent for the choking smoke. Ash made his way back to Herbert’s prone form as quickly as he could. He slung the scientist over a shoulder and, with one last glance back into the burning library, he jumped out the window.

Little shards of glass caught in his legs, but he mostly got out unscathed. Once he was back out into the cool night air Ash took a moment to breathe a bit. The edges of his vision were still wavering and he knew an adrenaline crash was coming. It was best to get as far as he could while he was still in a moving mood.

Quickly, surprisingly deftly for someone with only one hand, he tied the pieces of his harness together. It bit into his skin a bit, but it would do for now. Then he sheathed his shotgun, lifted the saw with his good hand and carefully put Herbert over his other shoulder, holding him in place with his stump. In the light of the fire he could see how bad the damage was and how much blood and reagent he was getting on Herbert’s newly clean clothes. A lot. A lot of blood.

Ash staggered away from the burning building. He didn’t know when Herbert would wake up. To be honest, he wasn’t sure Herbert would wake up at all, but he was attempting to be positive despite the massive failure. It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong had. Which was not surprising.

“Come on Herbert, wake up,” he said to the still form thrown over his shoulder. “I don’t feel like being alone with my thoughts right now. C’mon you little bastard, you’re tougher than they are. Herbert.” Ash kept the litany of soft words going, mostly to keep himself busy on the slow walk to the car. They were almost back when he felt the scientist stir. Before Ash could say anything Herbert screamed himself awake and then bit down savagely on Ash’s shoulder. Ash bit back a sound of pain and relief at the same time. Already the panicked jaws were loosening and Herbert was making sounds of confusion.

“Herbert-“ he said, but fell silent. There, leaned up against the car, looking casually at his nails, was Evil Ash.

***

Herbert was feeling disoriented and terrible thumping pain but he was feeling human, connected to his own body. Inside of it. The first proper sensation that flooded him was very gently being laid on the dewy grass. Herbert blinked and cleared his vision and looked up. There was Ash’s broad back and the man was shaking some but he had his shotgun trained on something.

On Evil Ash, who was smiling sardonically at the two of them. Ash was standing as firm as he could between the two of them. Something inside of Herbert hurt, brief but sharp. “Ash,” he said and the man didn’t turn around but some of the tension went out of his back. “I’m going to stand up Ash.” He pressed one hand into the grass, favoring his left for reasons he couldn’t currently remember. His mouth tasted like blood and he spat. Everything was going to come flooding back very soon, he knew that much, but he wanted to be on his feet when it all snapped into place.

Evil Ash’s eyes had been firmly on his twin (and his twin’s gun) but once Herbert was standing the white eyes slid over to him. “Hello Herbert,” he said and his voice was no different from Ash’s. It was unnerving. His gaze was also unnerving, full of amusement and knowing. “You don’t mind if I call you Herbert, do you? I just feel like I know you so well at this point.” His features took on a sinister cast. “We all know you now.”

Herbert straightened up, refusing to be intimidated. Evil Ash chuckled to himself. Ash was holding very still, the sight of his gun never wavering. The Deadite’s eyes flicked from Herbert to Ash and back to Herbert and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You certainly have a type, don’t you Herbert? Tall and dark and too good for their own good. Don’t know what you see in him.” His grin widened. “Maybe we’ll pay Dan a visit, what do you think of that Herbert? I think Dan would like to meet us. I think he’d find it… edifying.”

Herbert flinched inwardly, but stayed still as stone. They had to get to Arkham as soon as possible, but he wasn’t going to let the Deadite know. Instead he just glared. Evil Ash just laughed in return. “You can play at not caring if you like, and maybe it fools Ashley here, but I know better. I’ll give Dan your love.” He gave a little wave and made a move to go.

“Wait!” Ash rasped and his double paused. “What are you doing? Why do you want me alive?”

For a moment Evil Ash’s face darkened but it cleared up almost instantly. “Now, why would I go and ruin the surprise? Just keep yourself whole, if you can. I have such plans for you.” Then he did turn and in a blink he wasn’t there. Ash growled out in frustration and lowered the shotgun. Then he turned back to Herbert, who seized his forearm and gripped it too tightly.

“We need to get to Arkham, Massachusetts. We need to get there _right now_.”


	11. Chapter 10

Ash’s adrenaline had surged back up instantly at Herbert’s demand. He didn’t ask questions – that didn’t feel necessary or even, somehow, right. No, he just quickly grabbed his meager first aid kit out of the trunk and hopped into his car. There’d be plenty of time for questions (if Herbert wanted to ask them) on the long drive to Massachusetts.

Herbert had slumped over in his seat as soon as they had driven away from the burning house, but Ash let him. Maybe the scientist would handle it better than he had if there was time to rest. After all, Herbert wouldn’t be under attack immediately. Ash drove intently, simply ready to answer questions if they arose.

It didn’t take long for Herbert to stir, but instead of asking questions he was peering intently at Ash’s face and his wrists. Ash twisted in the driver’s seat, trying to avoid the intense gaze. He didn’t need Herbert to feel bad about the wounds that his possessed body had inflicted – he needed Herbert present, centered, alive. “I’m fine,” he said, trying to brush the scientist off, but Herbert just leaned in closer.

“I ought to stitch you up,” he said, half to himself and half to Ash. He reached out with his left hand and seemed to finally remember his burned appendage. In the fading light of the day it looked awful, cracked and bleeding and blackened in places, oozing yellow liquid in others. Herbert trembled and then hissed in surprise and pain and pulled his hand back. The scientist curled around his damaged limb like a wounded animal.

“There might be some salve in the first aid kit,” Ash said quickly, trying not to sound panicky. “Bandages too. Take care of yourself and don’t worry about me.”

Herbert reached out his good hand and rummaged slowly through the kit. Ash accelerated onto the highway and waited quietly. After a few moments Herbert spoke up.

“No salve. Not enough bandages either.”

“Shit!” Ash snapped at no one and slammed his good hand into the steering wheel. He couldn’t even have the simple first aid stuff he needed, no, of course not. The force of the strike jarred the gashes in his wrist and they began to bleed again, blood and reagent soaking into his sleeve. “Oh, _great_.”

He felt Herbert’s eyes on him again and when he turned Herbert was shaking again. The look on his face was terrible and Ash quickly turned back to the road. “I’m fine! Honest, I’m fine.”

Herbert sagged again but the shaking didn’t stop. Wordlessly he groped for his bag and pulled out a needle. As he pulled a portion of reagent into it Ash spared him a glance. “What are you-”

“I’m exhausted,” Herbert said and before Ash could protest Herbert had jabbed the needle into his arm and injected himself. Almost instantly surprise and disgust passed over his features. Yanking the needle out Herbert glared at his arm and the needle and back. He dropped the needle and clenched and unclenched his good hand. Finally, he spoke.

“I see what you mean now about feeling it in your bloodstream. About it being… thick.” He peered at his damaged hand and watched as threads of green leaked out with the blood, slowing the flow.

“I’d be careful of how much of that you inject,” Ash said. He waited for a sarcastic response that didn’t come. He cast another quick glance at his passenger, but Herbert was still and his eyes were downcast. Ash cleared his throat. Something had occurred to him and it was better to ask now then wait until the situation was critical.

“So, how much of that stuff did you use to bring me back? How much precisely?”

Herbert turned to him, confusion clear on his face. “What? Why does that matter?”

“In case something happens to you.” Herbert’s confusion didn’t dissipate. Ash felt a twinge of frustration and embarrassment at having to spell it out. “So I can bring you back.”

***

The words were like a slap in the face. Herbert recoiled, actually recoiled, like he was avoiding a physical blow. He was shaking again, damn it. Remember to breathe.

Ash was still driving as if his words didn’t mean anything much. As if they were just simple words. As if they weren’t sending quakes through him. Herbert had thought that his reaction to Ash thanking him for the resurrection had been extreme – now he knew better.

His breathing was shaky, but now it wasn’t coming in sporadic gulps. He could speak. “Are you sure you would want to do that?”

Ash pulled back, acting out the universal head movements that went with being asked a ridiculous question. “The fuck are you even saying? Of course I would.”

Herbert stared pointedly out the window. He felt like he might cry and he didn’t need anyone else to see it. Even if he was completely justified – he was feeling frayed along his every edge and when he closed his eyes he still saw flashes of hell wrapped around him, of Ash dying under him. Crying wouldn’t be at all surprising, considering. He still didn’t want to.

“Twelve ccs, assuming you administer the dose within a few minutes of death,” was all he said and he could almost feel an easing in his spine as he shared the information. Sharing was something he was having to get used to again.

Ash grunted a speculative little “huh” to indicate that he got the message but just fell silent after. Herbert wasn’t sure if he wanted silence or noise. He had questions, but he wasn’t really in a state of mind to take in answers, so he kept them tucked away in his brain.

The silence stretched long, but not uncomfortable, the car just filling with the sound of breathing and the occasional whimper of pain. Herbert’s hand hurt incredibly even as it wasn’t really bleeding anymore. His soul hurt too, aching from the snapping to and fro it had been doing, but he was trying to ignore that pain. He had no idea how to deal with it, after all. Hopefully time would ease it. He wanted to ask Ash but, if he was honest with himself, he was afraid of the answer he might get. No, better to push it away, to close it down. He was good at that.

Ash cleared his throat again, drawing Herbert out of his mental spiral.

“So who’s in Arkham? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

Herbert considered the question, considered what he should say about Dan, considered what Ash might already know, considered what Evil Ash had said. In the end he decided it was best to maintain a reserve. “A colleague,” he said, but even as he tried to keep his voice professional emotion seeped through, scarlet and vulnerable.

If Ash noticed he didn’t let on. “A colleague huh?”

Suddenly Herbert was self-conscious about his demand, but he knew he could not rescind it. He had to make sure that Dan was safe. “I’m sorry about the abruptness…” He trailed off, tried again. “I know it takes us away from your mission but-“

Ash waved the words away. “You having something, a colleague or whatever, is important, especially since I can’t ditch you and we’re probably going to run into more Deadites. Whatever you can use to drag yourself back is something, or someone, worth saving.”

Herbert felt a jab of guilt at this and Ash’s memories bubbled up under his own. Ash didn’t have anyone, not anymore. Herbert tried to say something, but couldn’t get the words out before Ash started speaking again.

“It’s why I still wear this,” he said conversationally, pulling a frankly strange necklace out from under his shirt. It was a small magnifying glass on a chain and Herbert recognized it instantly. “I don’t think they can get in anymore since Evil Ash is separate from me, but better safe than sorry. If your colleague stabilizes you, can keep you here, then they’re worth saving. Besides…” He trailed off and looked slightly distant. “The next closest book is this way anyway. Maybe even…” Now he frowned, surprise lying just under distrust.

Herbert stared out the front windshield and reached out with his mind, listening for the book. The call was stronger now and he was getting more directional nuance – must be from his… experience. As he listened he got a real sense that the book was-

“In Arkham?” He asked this last part aloud, ready to be wrong, but Ash didn’t deny his supposition.

“I think so.” His frown deepened in the darkness. “The next book and your colleague in the same town? Feels like a set up to me.”

Herbert nodded and glared into the night ahead of them. “Me too.” He remembered their track record so far and tried to swallow his sudden surge of fear. They had to succeed this time. Dan flashed across his mind, left alone and likely grieving in that empty house. Herbert’s jaw tensed. They had to succeed.


	12. Chapter 11

They didn’t really talk for any more of the drive, which suited Ash fine. Herbert seemed to be in some sort of meditation state and Ash was perfectly happy for him to keep at it – whatever helped. Ash had been in his shoes and knew how badly Herbert was hurting, even if he didn’t want to talk about it. Whatever helped, and if what helped was silence so be it.

The quiet left Ash with plenty of time to confirm his fear – that the book was in Arkham. Then, once that was pretty well settled, Ash eased into a spiral of gut churning worry. Was it a set up? A trap? Evil Ash wanted him alive, captured, and maybe that was the point of the threat. Using Herbert’s memories and emotions to ensnare Ash. Or might it be a hostage situation? Taking Herbert’s colleague and demanding Ash in exchange? Ash wasn’t sure what Herbert would do in a situation like that, but he could guess. The colleague’s name was Dan and Herbert had said it in the motel room and it had sung in his borrowed memories. Herbert may bury things, but he couldn’t quite bury everything relating to Dan. Dan was, beyond a doubt, very important. Not that Ash had any real measure of him as a person. He could probably infer a bit about him physically just from Evil Ash’s description. Could he be the man in the photo? Ash was burning to ask these things but refrained. Herbert had only referred to him as a colleague and it didn’t matter how much emotion had ridden on that word – he clearly didn’t want to discuss it and Ash was respecting that.

He wondered if he’d actually get to meet the man, or if Dan would already be dead or possessed by the time they reached Arkham and then he got mad at himself. He couldn’t go in thinking that way. They would make it in time.

“Do you want to call him?” Ash asked suddenly, startling his passenger. “You can borrow my phone.”

Herbert nodded and reached out and Ash briefly juggled driving with pulling his phone out of one pocket. He had to prise it open because of drying blood. Then he turned back to the road and willed himself to not listen to the call.

Herbert curled around the phone and spoke into it, low and urgent. “Dan?” Then he made a click of irritation and Ash distantly heard the beep of an answering machine. “Dan, it’s Herbert. Pick up. Dan? Call this number back Dan. I need to know…” He trailed off, then rallied before the machine could cut him off. “I need to know if you’re alright. Don’t hesitate to call whenever you find this.”

Ash took his phone back and balanced it in his one dingy cup holder. Herbert shot him a questioning look and he just shrugged. “No one is going to be calling me, so I might as well leave it where you can get at it.” Herbert just nodded and went back to silently looking out the window.

Ash waited, ears pricked hopefully, but as the hours wore on his spirit sank. He drove and drove and turned round and round in his mind. There were too many variables, too much to keep track of, and he was still recovering from the blood loss. He wanted desperately to talk, to drag himself away from whatever his mind conjured up, but Herbert stayed silent and if that was his healing method then that was that. It was a long winter night and the sun was just threatening to come up when Ash drove the old car off of the highway and pulled into another college town, this one gathered around Miskatonic University. Herbert finally stirred and began to offer detailed driving directions. Ash let him, not bothering to mention the hazy memories that were being called up at the sight of certain buildings, trees. He could probably have found his way without Herbert’s help.

The town was still, quiet, but that was to be expected in the predawn hours of a weekday. “Here,” Herbert said and his voice was uncertain, worried. “Turn here. It’s the third house down.”

There was no car in the driveway, but this didn’t seem to bother Herbert at all. Ash let the small man lead the way up to the door. The sun was just coming up. Herbert hesitated one moment and then knocked hard with his good hand. They waited one agonizingly long moment, then the door was pulled open by a sleepy looking man. He was tall and had dark hair and it took him a moment to focus on the two of them on his doorstep. Ash felt a sudden, painful stab in his buried memories.

“Herbert? Who’s this?”

Next to him Herbert straightened up, looking for a moment like he hadn’t been forced through hell less than 24 hours before. “He’s my greatest creation.”

Ash turned to look right at Herbert, dripping disbelief. “Are you really trying to impress him with me? Really?” Before Herbert could answer Ash turned back to the man he knew to be Dan and stepped forward into the light of the hallway to introduce himself. Ash didn’t get a single word out before all the blood drained out of Dan’s face. Too late Ash remembered what he must look like, what a hellscape his face was.

Dan was fully awake now and quickly looked him up and down. “Shit,” he whispered “who did this to you?”

Ash flinched, tried to explain, but he was too slow. “I did,” Herbert said and his voice had lost its luster of pride, of happiness at seeing Dan. He sounded dead, hopeless. He stepped forward to stand next to Ash and Dan turned to look him and blanched all over again.

“Jesus Herbert, what happened to your hand?”

He rushed forward to Herbert’s side even as Herbert was pulling away. “Ash,” he croaked out as he pulled his burned left hand out of Dan’s reach. “Take care of Ash first.”

“No,” Ash said sharply, firm enough to draw both Herbert and Dan’s attention. “No. Take care of Herbert first. It won’t take as long and I’m used to pain. Please fix him up.” He looked right into Dan’s eyes and ignored Herbert’s protests. Dan silently nodded, then turned and shepherded Herbert all the way inside the house, closing the front door behind him. “Wait in the kitchen,” he said as he padded down a hallway. “I’ll be right there.”

Ash followed a sullen Herbert into a little linoleum space and sat in a spare chair. The scientist was glaring at him. Back to normal, it seemed.

***

If Herbert had really thought about it he would have known that his irritation at being undermined by Ash and ignored by Dan was distracting him from the still fresh horror in his mind. He wasn’t thinking about it though, because he was pissed.

“I did that to you,” he hissed at the infuriatingly calm Ash. “I should wait!”

Ash was sitting somewhat bonelessly in one of the familiar kitchen chairs. “You didn’t do anything. Besides, I’ve got wrists and face and back of the head problems and I think my nose needs to be reset and maybe a cheekbone is broken? Point is, I’ve got a lot that’s fucked up, more than just your hand. Getting you squared away will take less time. I don’t want you to just sit there suffering because you feel bad about something you had no control over.”

He was too calm, too sensible by half. Herbert puffed himself up to argue some more when Dan strode back into the room with an armload of first aid material. All at once he was struck with the delayed realization – Dan was fine. Dan wasn’t dead, Dan wasn’t possessed. Dan was the same as he ever was. Dan was safe.

Herbert pushed his face into his good hand and smiled against it, careful to not jostle his burned hand that Dan was just now examining closely. Herbert looked up at Ash, still smiling. The man looked like shit, really he did, but when he caught Herbert’s eye and Herbert’s smile of relief he grinned back. His face was smeared with dark, muddy blood, blood that sat on top of blooming bruises. The gouges on his face were scabbed up, as was the small chunk that had been bitten out of one cheek. In spite of it all he was grinning full force, threatening to break his tender scabs apart.

“He’s fine,” Herbert managed to say around the unexpected lump in his throat. “We made it. He’s _fine_.” Ash just nodded back, his relief clear.

Dan looked up from Herbert’s damaged hand and into his face. His features were creased with worry.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, voice low and quiet. “Did you fall in a fire or something?” He cast a look back over his should at Ash, then turned back to Herbert. “You say _you_ did that to him?” Another quick, appraising look at Ash’s features. Herbert also looked at Ash, for guidance. They hadn’t discussed what they would say to Dan. To be perfectly honest he just been concerned with getting here and making sure his roommate was alright. Should they tell him about the demons, about the danger? Would he even believe them?

Ash drug his chair closer and leaned in like he was ready to share some conspiracy. Dan sat up straighter in his own chair and looked at Ash. “I’m sorry,” he said firmly. “I didn’t catch your name.”

***

It was almost absurd that this young man was looking at him so seriously, asking about his name, about to work some medical student skills on the burned hand of an irritating scientist that was his only living friend. It was even more absurd that, now that he was in this house and looking at this man, Herbert’s fuzzy memories were flaring up and clarifying themselves. Just looking at Dan made him feel like iron bars were constricting around his heart.

Ash pushed every last scrap of that away and looked at the stranger in front of him. He smiled. “Sorry about that, I guess we all got a little distracted.” Dan’s face twitched slightly and he clearly wanted to say something but he refrained in favor of remaining serious. It was terribly endearing. “Ashley Williams,” Ash said, suppressing a smile. “People usually call me Ash.” He almost extended his hand, then looked down at it and realized just how much dried blood was staining the skin. “I’d shake, but I’m sort of a mess.”

Not missing a beat Dan extended his own hand and Ash certainly couldn’t turn him down now. They shook and Dan’s grip was a shade too hard and sticky with a thin film of sweat. He was nervous Ash realized. He wished what he and Herbert had to tell Dan was less awful. He wished he could relieve that nervousness.

“Dan Cain,” he said and gave a firm little nod. Then he turned back to Herbert’s hand seriously and began the work of patching the scientist up. “I’m going to have to cut off some of this dead skin.” He was looking at Herbert intently and slightly ill. Herbert just nodded tersely and didn’t seem disturbed, just grim. As Dan began his work Herbert turned his eyes to Ash. He raised a questioning eyebrow, but Ash wasn’t entirely sure what the question was. Herbert frowned in irritation and cleared his throat to actually speak.

“How should we say this?”

Ah, that was a good question. One Ash honestly couldn’t answer.

“You know Dan better than I do. How _should_ we say this?”

Dan looked up briefly from slicing away dead flesh and applying ointment. “I’ve learned to believe the stuff you tell me Herbert; otherwise you kill my cat.”

Herbert’s eyes flashed behind his glasses. “I did _not_ kill your cat!”

The words sent phantom sensation bubbling up Ash’s spine and then, with only that warning, a memory of Herbert’s triggered. He was still in the kitchen, but it was afternoon, and the recycling bin was knocked over. A cat lay very still on the floor. Ash squinted at it.

“What kind of cat gets its head stuck in a jar?” he said to himself, forgetting there were other people in the room at all. Dan had gone white and Herbert had straightened up in his seat, watching Ash intensely. Ash meant to turn back to the table, but the memory pulled him further along. He shuffled out into the living room and watched as a blond woman screamed at him and he felt a plan take shape in his mind. “Jeez Herbert, you reanimated the cat?” Ash heard noises of surprise behind him. In his mind the woman was back, shrieking and accusatory and he tried desperately to push through the fuzziness and see this person as she was and not just as Herbert had packed her away in his mind. The scream was sharp, clear, like a dagger he kept sheathed within his own flesh. Her edges shifted in and out of focus and he was close, so close…

“Come back Ash.” Herbert’s voice was soft but it pierced right through the veil of memory. He blinked, turned back towards the kitchen. Still, he could see snatches of her in the living room, a patchwork of memories blending together. Always with Dan, almost always disapproving of his presence. The memories were like a boiling pot of water and they bubbled over occasionally. They scalded. Ash shook his head and came back to the kitchen table.

“Who…” he said, but wasn’t sure what he was asking and stopped. “Is anyone going to come home? Are we going to disrupt someone by being here?”

“No?” Dan said, face slightly confused and completely innocent. Herbert though, Herbert flinched and looked away. Ash suddenly remembered the woman in the photograph and the final, awful scream in Herbert’s memory. Ice slipped down his spine.

“What the hell is going on Herbert?” Dan asked. He seemed like he wanted to ask more but he left it at the single, broad question to start.

Herbert heaved a sigh and began explaining. Ash was quietly impressed that Herbert didn’t leave anything out. He told Dan about breaking into the university building and meeting Ash and when he got to Evil Ash and the mirror and Ash’s death he didn’t even hesitate. Dan had been listening quietly but at this point he held up a hand.

“I know what I said earlier about believing you Herbert but this is hard to swallow…” Ash stepped forward and pulled his collar away from his torn up neck. It was stiff with fresh blood. And he had just washed that shirt.

Dan leaned in to examine it and sucked in a surprised, harsh breath when he laid eyes on the gashes. “These are pretty well scabbed over but they should have killed you.”

“They did,” Ash said simply, readjusting his shirt.

Dan looked at him then, really looked, and something on Ash’s face must have spoken to him. He turned back to Herbert with a new set in his shoulders. Herbert continued, detailing the reanimation and the flight from the building. Then the museum and the memory trick and here he faltered, stopped. Ash decided to help.

“The demon had us live each other’s memories. That’s how I knew about your cat.” Herbert seemed surprised at the bluntness of Ash’s statement but Dan just nodded in response, still bent low over Herbert’s arm. He was applying bandages now, methodical and neat. Herbert continued again, conveying as much as he could in as few words as possible. As he got to the house, the book he had held in his hands Herbert slowed down. He fidgeted until Dan was done with his hand, then he practically leapt out of the seat so Ash could take his place. Ash did and Herbert began to pace the small kitchen. He paused a long time before continuing.

“I was possessed. Ash and I fought and I managed to get back into my body before either of us died. That’s how the two of us got hurt.” Ash had begun shaking his head before Herbert finished, which made Dan’s effort to clean away the blood on his face more difficult.

“We didn’t fight,” Ash said, finally holding relatively still so Dan could continue. “I fought a Deadite, and so did you. We were fighting the same thing together.” Herbert didn’t look convinced. He continued.

“Then they threatened you and we came here.” Dan stilled at this news but didn’t look up. “We had to come and make sure that you were safe.”

“You’re not hurt, are you?” Ash leaned in now to inspect Dan, looking for minute cuts or nicks, any snag in the skin that would allow a Deadite to gain entry. Dan was pale when he finally looked up.

“No, no I don’t think so. Why would they threaten me?”

“To throw Herbert off. To scare us. To be cruel. Because they can. Who knows?”

Dan was looking at Herbert now, who was staring out the window. “What about the books? The other two that are still out there?”

“The next one is here, in Arkham, probably in Miskatonic University.” Ash furrowed his brow. “It’s probably a trap – their leader wants me alive.”

Dan paused from prepping for stitches. “You’re going to go in there when you think it’s a trap?”

Ash grinned at him in response, because smiling was better than screaming. “Don’t have a choice! I have to try.” He was happy the question had been asked though, because it gave him an opening. He steeled himself, trying to gather as much firmness and resolve as possible. He was going to need it.

“Herbert.” Herbert turned around and already his face was clouding over with opposition, with a fight. Damn it. “Herbert, when I go into Miskatonic you’re going to have to stay here.”

***

Herbert had been relieved at how easily Dan had accepted their ludicrous tale. He had been ready to fight about it, make him believe them, believe him but it hadn’t been necessary. Herbert had expected the flood of relief in his heart to stem but that just hadn’t happened. His heart still felt like it might burst.

But he had been thinking about Ash, not able to look at him getting patched up, thinking about how he must have been seeing Meg in his memories and wondering if she was going to come home. The memories would probably clarify and then what? What did it matter if Ash remembered Meg? Herbert just didn’t want him to.

So he was staring out the window and he heard Ash call his name and the tone was ever so slightly different than usual. Herbert’s instincts pinged and he turned around, ready for whatever Ash was going to proclaim. Ready to fight his decision, whatever it was.

“Herbert, when I go into Miskatonic you’re going to have to stay here.”

Herbert’s eyes narrowed. “I know I haven’t been the biggest help to you Ashley but you can’t just leave me here.” Dan flinched at the venom is Herbert’s voice, but Ash was still as stone.

“It’s not about whether you’ve helped me or not; you’re still hurt, hell you’re more hurt! You could get possessed again and if I can keep that from happening I will. Besides, one of us needs to stay here with Dan and make sure that he stays safe.”

It made sense. Why was he making so much sense all of a sudden? It was irritating.

“Well you’re not ready to go anywhere yet,” was all Herbert could come up with. Ash smiled at the weak retort. “Don’t gloat – it doesn’t suit you.”

Now Ash laughed and Dan smiled and Herbert felt off kilter in a not-entirely-terrible way and he hated it. But also he didn’t.

“I didn’t plan on leaving yet. I’m in the middle of the most medical care I’ve gotten in months. And I can’t walk around on your campus in a shirt with quite this much blood on it.” He paused, thinking. “I’ll probably wait until nightfall too, to try and minimize how many people will be there.”

“And I’ll stay here.” Herbert’s voice was still bitter.

“Yeah.”

Herbert considered the sun outside, then his watch. “Good thing I have a couple hours to convince you otherwise.”

Ash groaned and Dan barked a short laugh. “Is he always this awful?” Ash asked Dan.

Dan sat up, cutting another length of surgical thread. “Pretty much as long as I’ve known him, yeah.”

Herbert snorted at the two of them and moved to the fridge. He was hungry and irritated and he was going to take it out on Dan’s groceries.


	13. Chapter 12

Good to his word Herbert had tried to wear Ash down until the sun had begun to set. Ash had been forced to sit still for much of it. His injuries were just about as bad as he had predicted and Dan had his work cut out for him. But he was patient and through and when Herbert had asked if he had classes he was missing Dan had just waved it off. 

“It’s not a problem,” he said somewhat evasively, not even looking up from the bit of Ash he was fixing in that moment. “Besides, I’m not sure there will be class tomorrow once you guys are done with the place.” 

The plural had set Herbert off again. He never asked nicely to go; no, he just switched between trying logic and berating Ash. Ash tried very hard not to laugh at him too much. His mind was made up and nothing Herbert did would change it. He didn’t bother telling Herbert that though, since he knew it would make not the slightest bit of difference. 

Finally he was reset and bandaged and clean and as near to whole as he was going to get. Ash was willing to bet that he still looked like hell, but at least it was a hell that was cared for. He stood, stretched carefully so as not to ruin all of Dan’s hard work, and before he even finished Herbert was at his side scowling. It was unbelievable. 

Herbert was getting ready to argue again when Ash cut him off. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re like a bear trap? Or those ants that bite and never let go?” 

Herbert blinked in confusion and Ash took the opportunity to slide into the new harness he had jerry rigged and pulled his jacket on over that. Herbert rallied, started again, but Ash was merciless. 

“Stay here Herbert. Keep the two of you safe, alright? That’s the best way you can help me.” Herbert sank back sullenly but nodded. Finally. 

Ash looked between the two of them and tried to think of something smart or useful to say. 

“Don’t let anyone in and stay away from the windows,” was all he came up with, but he didn’t think it was too terrible. 

“Thank you Ashley,” Herbert said and Ash realized that Herbert could teach the world’s teenagers a thing or two about petulance. He didn’t bother trying to get the last word because it was an impossible task. Instead he pulled his jacket around himself and stepped out into Arkham’s misty night. 

The streets were… strange. Not Deadite strange but not the normal sort of strange that sometimes cloaked benign areas. It was something else entirely and Ash shuddered slightly as it passed over his skin. Now that he was in the town Ash wasn’t surprised in the slightest that Herbert and his bizarre research had made their way here. As he looked at the old wooden buildings flanking the narrow streets he wondered what other uncanny things were hiding in the college town. The hairs on the back of neck were prickling and dancing at each aged façade but he kept marching forward resolutely. Whatever mysteries were in Arkham weren’t his business right now. Here was here for one specific weirdo thing. 

The medical branch of Miskatonic University was ahead of him now, looming out of the mist. Even in its shroud he recognized it from Herbert’s memories. And there, in a puddle of lamplight, was Evil Ash. He was holding the Necronomicon, letting it dangle from his fingers casually. He looked like he could be waiting for a bus or for a friend to come outside. He was shifting uncomfortably though and Ash couldn’t help his question. 

“You don’t like it here either?” 

Evil Ash looked up, shrugged at him. “Even if you loved Arkham it would give me the creeps. Your distaste on top of mine…” He trailed off and took his eyes off of Ash for a moment to scan the surrounding area. 

“You telling me I impact you?” 

“We’re connected – you’re just too scared to pursue it.” 

Ash’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t need lectures on open mindedness from his evil double. Evil Ash seemed to be loosening up and he grinned at Ash and stepped partially out of the lamplight and towards the building. 

“Come along Ashley,” he almost sang, “let’s get this over with.” 

Ash stepped forward, clenching his fist. “Could you set a less obvious trap?” 

Evil Ash looked over his shoulder, still gleeful. “I don’t know Ashley – could you walk less blindly into one?” 

Ash gritted his teeth and rushed forward but Evil Ash had sensed his motive and darted inside in the same instant. The chase was on. 

***

Herbert was pacing around the small house like a zoo animal in a too-small enclosure. Dan, for his part, was just sitting on the couch watching his rounds and periodically blinking himself awake. 

“You still don’t sleep?” he asked and Herbert flinched at how tired he sounded. He whirled around and faced Dan, resolving to do better. 

“No, I still dose myself. I probably need to cut down now that I’m...” He trailed off, looking for the word, not finding it. “Now that I’ve been dead.” No, that didn’t sound any better than his other options. Truth was not always beautiful. 

Dan was frowning at him, like he had been doing periodically since they had shown up. It was a look of concern and Herbert tried to ignore it. He didn’t want to upset Dan but it seemed like he didn’t have any choice. 

Herbert sighed heavily. “I’d offer you some, but I’m running low. If only my supplies were here.” 

Dan stifled a yawn. “They are, right downstairs. When the police came by with it I lied and said it was mine.” He paused and looked around shiftily. “You know, in case you came back.” 

Herbert suddenly found it hard to breathe. Without a word he wheeled around and ran to the basement door, down the stairs, into the familiar dark. He pulled the light’s chain and his knees went weak at the sight. His lab, carefully reconstructed, not perfect but from memory. Clean and lonely and there, all there. He heard Dan at the top of the stairs and he searched vainly for words to express his gratitude. 

“Sorry I didn’t mention it before, it kind of slipped my mind.” 

Herbert shook his head violently. “Don’t apologize, no. Dan this is more than I ever could have hoped for.” He turned to Dan and tried to make sure that Dan understood how important this was to him. “Thank you Dan.” 

Dan pulled back in surprise, then smiled slightly. “Least I could do. I know how much your work means to you.” Herbert had turned back to his workbench and was pulling the contents of his bag out and spreading them across the surface. The notebook sprawled away from his fingers and he saw the edge of the photograph. A sudden thought seized him and dread filled his guts. 

“Miss Halsey’s body isn’t still at the school, right?” 

Dan frowned in confusion. “What?” 

Herbert whipped around violently. “Meg’s body! It’s not at Miskatonic still, right?” 

Dan was shaking his head, backing away from Herbert’s grasping hands. “No! She was buried not long after you left, her and her father.” 

Herbert sagged in relief. Then, another thought. He cast Dan a sideways glance. “And Hill?” 

Dan’s face scrunched up in thought. “Pretty sure he was buried too. Why?” 

“Just thinking about what the Deadites might use. Ash doesn’t need to run into Hill.” Or Meg and Halsey, but for very different reasons. “I just… don’t like the thought of their bodies getting used like that.” 

Dan looked like he was in sharp pain. He tried to cover it up with more talk. “Oh, of course. They inhabit dead bodies too?” 

Herbert nodded distractedly, but the words were chasing around his mind. He glared at the table top, brain engaging, and he spread his hands out. The dead. Of course. 

His back straightened like he’d been shot through with electricity. He turned back to Dan, who was clearly uncomfortable with all this sudden confrontation. “Would you give me a hand here Dan? I need a lot more reagent than I have now. Then I need to get going to Miskatonic.” 

Dan had stepped forward at the request for help, but now he had stopped. “Ash said you should stay here.” 

“I know.” Herbert’s eyes were glittering with excitement. “But now I have a plan.” 

***

Ash had followed his double through the maze of hallways and was completely irritated at how the demon stayed just out of reach. Any fear he might have had had been temporarily quashed by the smirk on Evil Ash’s face. 

“You’re not clever you know! I knew this was a trap before we even got into Massachusetts!” 

“I clearly don’t need to be clever with you since you still came.” 

Evil Ash turned quickly around a corner, running again, and Ash bulled after him, nearly ripping a still closing door off of its hinges. He reached under his jacket for his gun but froze. The room was clearly a lab and Evil Ash stood in the center by a metal table. His hands were extended to either side of him and his was dissolving into the many reflective surfaces in the room. Ash lunged forward, made a desperate grab for the book, but he was too late. The doppelganger was gone from the room and now grinning at him out of every gleaming surface. When Ash glanced around to take all that in the room twinged memories in him, bad ones. He pushed them away and focused. 

Evil Ash tilted his head. “You know what happened in this room, right? The Miskatonic Massacre. You know how many people died?” He was shivering with delight at this whole line of questioning. “One person, one sweet young lady.” The memories surged up harder in his mind, like vomit. “Let’s not have a repeat of that night, shall we?” He waited for a response but Ash was struggling to keep control against whatever Herbert had shoved down deep in his mind. “Just give up Ashley.” 

Ash swallowed and his throat tasted like bile. “Fuck you.” 

Evil Ash sighed but didn’t look surprised. “Alright, if that’s how you want to play it. Try not to struggle too much – I want you as whole as possible.” When he finished speaking a heavy metal door swung open. A blast of cold air and a thick fog of rot surged into Ash’s face. _The morgue_ his mind told him, just a split second before he heard the powerful shrieking of multiple Deadite voices. They poured from the dark opening screaming his name. 

“Careful with him!” Evil Ash’s voice somehow carried over the cacophony. “I’d like him alive.” 

***

The run through Arkham had been… unsettling to say the least. The town had never bothered him before and Dan seemed unperturbed, so it must be something from his new condition. It almost felt like something that was worth investigating someday, if he made it back here…

There was no time to think about that though. He hadn’t even had time to try and convince Dan to stay behind. When he’d told Dan what he was planning Dan had been resolute. 

“I’m coming Herbert! You’re just wasting time by arguing about it.” It was a page out of Herbert’s own book of arguments and he was powerless against it. Instead they just took off sprinting into the night, Herbert’s bag heavy with reagent bottles. 

As the medical school came into view Herbert felt his intestines twist up and sink. The words of the Necronomicon didn’t weigh heavily on his mind, but the pressure of Deadite presence left him feeling ill. His wounds under his bandages itched but he mentally gathered himself and forced the sensation away. Maybe he should have stayed away…

No. He was going to stay focused on a single thing – his plan. He and Dan pulled up to the school’s door and Herbert turned to Dan. “Try and stay behind me,” Herbert said. “Neither of us needs you getting hurt.” 

Dan nodded, deadly serious, and together they entered the familiar building. As they moved quickly and quietly through the halls the pressure on Herbert began to increase. The edges of his vision were wavering ever so slightly when suddenly, ahead of them, there was a maelstrom of screams. Chief among them was the occasional panicked cry that he recognized. The world snapped back into focus as adrenaline surge through him. Dan had gone as pale as empty paper. 

“Ash,” Herbert breathed out and there he was, tearing around some corner and fumbling with his shotgun and some ammo. He stopped short when he saw Herbert and Dan, mouth falling open and surprise and anger fighting across his face. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” he hissed out, but it was all he managed to say before a Deadite thrashed around the corner. The man was pale and laced with thick purple veins. His neck was broken and it flopped around as the thing shrieked Ash’s name. Ash pivoted around, hand tightening around his unloaded gun, still ready to fight. 

“Grab him!” Herbert yelled and Ash threw him one quick over the shoulder look of confusion. “Just do it!” Herbert’s hands were moving quickly, filling a syringe completely. Ash grunted, feigned right then lunged left, shifting quickly behind the Deadite. Then he wrapped his arms around the arms of the creature, pulling them both back and immobilizing the demon. The Deadite still bit at Ash as best it could, broken neck lolling. Herbert darted forward, plunging the needle into the soft dead flesh and injecting. 

“Now get away from him!” Ash shoved the thing away and drew up beside Herbert, in front of Dan. All three of them watched, expectant. The dead man was shaking, aggressive cries reduced to confused little noises. It fell to its knees and then exploded violently, spattering the onlookers with blood. For a moment the hall was mostly shocked silence. Herbert waited a beat before speaking. 

“Well?” he asked, turning to Ash. Ash’s eyes were wide and still fixed on the bloody spot on the floor. Slowly he turned to Herbert. 

“What do you want to hear? That you’re brilliant? You knew that already.” 

Herbert couldn’t suppress a grin. 

From ahead of them in the building there was another round of bloodcurdling screams. 

***

Ash squared his shoulders and peered into the hallway ahead. He wanted to send Herbert and Dan back, but there wasn’t time for that. Time for his next best option. Without turning around he thrust his gun at Dan, followed quickly by his pocket of ammunition. 

“Don’t get hurt,” he said, emphasizing each word. “Who or whatever you have to shoot. And stay behind us.” 

Herbert just nodded as he spoke, partially distracted by his task of filling two syringes. He slipped one carefully into his coat pocket and kept the other at hand. Ash glanced around, saw a fire axe in its case and quickly smashed through the glass. He gave it one experimental swing, another, and was satisfied. 

“How many are there?” Herbert asked, and there was a slight tremor in his voice that Ash didn’t like. 

“There were eight, at least I think there were. I got some lucky shots off and got two of them already. Plus this one just now. Five left and I’m sure they’re coming fast.” There was a thin film of sweat on Herbert’s brow and the needle in his hand was shaking. Ash reconsidered his efforts to get the two students to leave. “Are you alright? Do you need to-“

“Just talk to me,” Herbert forced out through gritted teeth. “Both of you talk to me.” 

Dan’s face creased in worry and Ash began to walk forward quickly. Clearing the school out was going to be the best, quickest way to help Herbert out. “So Dan,” Ash said, full of false brightness, “how’s the semester going?” 

“Wh-what?” Dan stammered out before catching on. “Oh! I actually haven’t been going to classes much since-“

Before he could finish his thought an elderly woman barreled around the corner. She laughed wildly when she saw the three of them and her limbs seemed to stretch grotesquely towards them. Ash whipped the shaft of the axe at her, cracking it solidly against her face. She squealed and clawed blindly at him. Herbert, who had been struggling moments before seemed to solidify in the face of danger and dosed the woman’s body. This time the three of them didn’t wait around to watch the Deadite convulse itself to death. Instead they moved quickly through the halls, trying to zero in on the remaining Deadites through sound. 

They had fallen weirdly silent though and the threesome’s footsteps slowed. “Could something have happened to the other ones?” Herbert asked in the quiet. 

Just then a Deadite burst from the door beside them cackling. It seized Herbert with mangled hands and threw him violently against the hall’s far wall. Herbert’s skull cracked against the discolored plaster. 

“Herbert!” Dan cried out, rushing to him. Ash was relieved that someone else was here to do the rushing to – he was busy with the Deadite. The body had been in some sort of car accident, a bad one, and its half-there face was leering at Ash. Ash ignored it and buried his axe into the cleft between its head and shoulder. The thing reached for him but he hit it again, staying squarely between it and Dan and Herbert. He heard movement behind him and a surprised “Herbert?” but he ignored it in favor of striking the Deadite’s head from its body and crushing the head with a quick, vicious stomp. Headless and disoriented the body was quickly dismembered. Job done, Ash finally turned back to see if Herbert was alright. Through the whole process he hadn’t heard screaming, which could be good or bad. 

Herbert was standing, shaking his head slightly and scattering little droplets of blood. He stood up straight and looked fine, if not angry at the ambush. Dan was moving around him, trying to get a good look at the back of his head. “Herbert, you really shouldn’t be moving!” Herbert wasn’t listening, was stretching his neck instead. He spat, and the gobbet of blood was laced with neon green. Dan saw it and fell quiet. 

“It’s spreading,” Herbert said to Ash and his tone gave nothing away. 

“I’m sorry Herbert.” 

“Don’t be – if it means being thrown that hard against a wall isn’t a trial I’ll take it.” 

A keening wail echoed down the empty halls, reminding them that they needed to keep moving. Still, in the moment’s pause Herbert managed to ask a question. “The book isn’t here anymore, is it?” 

Ash shook his head and they began moving again. He had known where the cry had come from. He would have sworn that all the Deadites had chased him out, but apparently not. The sound could only be coming from the morgue. 

***

Herbert wasn’t sure where the sounds were coming from but he knew the path Ash was leading them on. He hadn’t been at Miskatonic for very long, but it was a familiar one. They were going to the lab, to the morgue. Blood was still seeping into his mouth – he must have bit himself in the attack – but he swallowed it down. His nerves were jangling all along his limbs. 

The morgue. 

Even though he had been as good as dead, and recently too, that room still held some power in his imagination. He had almost died there, only luck keeping him alive. He did not want to go back. 

But they couldn’t just leave while Deadites were still roaming about, even if the book was gone. Hopefully with his needles full of reagent he could end it quickly, quicker than by axe alone. Dan was behind him and the occasional glance back reveled how badly he was shaking. Herbert fervently wished he had worked harder at getting his roommate to stay behind. Too late now. 

They drew up to the lab’s door and stopped. Ash looked ill and also unsure of as to why. Dan’s grip on the gun firmed. Herbert had reloaded his syringe. They all paused and took a breath. Just beyond the door Herbert could hear a thick snickering. 

“We ready?” Ash didn’t look behind him for a response, which sort of defeated the purpose of asking a covert question. Ash bobbed his head once, twice, and on the third head bob he busted through the door, axe at the ready. The room appeared to be empty despite the noises that had been drifting out of it. They took a cautious step inside, then another. Herbert’s eyes roamed the room and he tried to avoid looking at the spot Hill’s body had died. It was hard to do. 

“Where the fuck are they?” Ash hissed out and neither Herbert nor Dan had time to answer because they burst for the second time from the morgue, actually throwing the heavy metal door off of its hinges. 

Herbert fell back and Ash did the same, forcing Dan behind them into a corner. The wave of four Deadites surged forward and Herbert planted his feet. He needed the Deadites close but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t mind their current speed. He felt Dan push down on his shoulder. When he didn’t move fast enough Dan pushed harder and finally Herbert dropped to one knee. Above him, Dan took aim. 

The shotgun thundered once, twice. The first shot only grazed one of the corpses, sending it off balance. The second shot tore through the chest of a man who had died on the operating table, his trunk already hanging open from surgery. That man stumbled, fell. 

Suddenly the wave was halved. Ash flashed a grin at Dan and then tried to pull Herbert up. “Let’s go,” he said close to Herbert’s ear. 

“Right or left?” 

“Right.” And then they were moving, dodging wide armed swings from the two Deadites. Ash struck the right one with his axe and it stuck in the meat of its chest. Ash yanked on the thing and the Deadite stumbled forward against its will. Herbert jabbed the needle in, yanking it free a moment later. As quickly as he could Herbert pulled out his second full syringe and wheeled around to the left Deadite. He was a little slow and the dead woman raked her clawed hands across his chest. Herbert grunted and flinched away. Behind him he heard the wet squelching of a body exploding and then an axe swung by, close to his face, catching the woman in the ribcage. 

Beyond the tableau the Deadite that had been grazed was back on his course, making straight for Dan who was still fumbling with reloading the gun. Herbert slid past the dead woman’s pinwheeling arms and crashed right into the Deadite. The thing shrieked at the surprise assault and turned on its attacker. It thrust its hands towards his face and head but before it could get hold of too much Herbert thrust the full needle into it neck. The reagent went in but the Deadite didn’t let go. It was shaking and screaming but it was still trying to tear his hair out or bite off his nose, preferably both at once. Herbert shoved and shoved but the thing didn’t release its grip and finally it exploded. Herbert’s face filled with blood and something darker and thicker, his shirt soaking through instantly. He fell back coughing, trying to clear his vision. 

Ash straightened from his work of chopping the Deadite into small pieces, his own face covered in blood and acrid blue slime. The only sound in the room was Dan’s harsh breathing and the slow wet sliding of the last remaining Deadite as it crawled across the tile towards them. Ash stepped up to Dan and gently took his gun back, then he strode to the slow moving corpse. The thing craned its neck up at Ash. 

“You’re going to fail,” it bubbled out from the blood pooling around its lips. “We’ll have you forever.” Ash didn’t respond, just pulled the trigger and the Deadite went still as its head disintegrated. Then he turned back to Herbert and Dan. A small smile played across his features. 

“You know, that went way better than I thought it would.” 


	14. Chapter 13

The three of them had stood there for a minute in that dark room, lost in their own thoughts. Ash could see the massacre that his double had alluded to, could see the riotous dead and how close Herbert had come to death not once but twice. He could see the one he was sure had died and he recognized her from the memories at the house and from that photo Herbert carried. The memories finally provided something concrete to him, a name wrapped in a swirl of conflicted emotions. Meg Halsey. 

And when Ash turned to the other two they seemed lost in that night too, diminished. Ash cleared his throat to draw them out of it, which worked. It was an important step too because distantly, just on the edge of hearing, were sirens. Again. This more than anything seemed to galvanize Dan. 

“Follow me,” he whispered despite not really needing to and then he half ran out of the room. Ash and Herbert followed but it seemed that wasn’t quite quick enough for Dan. He waved at them, hard, and when that didn’t get them moving to his satisfaction he grabbed Herbert’s wrist and began to almost drag him bodily. Herbert finally came alive, yelped at the indignity of being hauled down a hallway but Dan didn’t let go. Ash followed behind at a trot and tried very hard to keep his laughter to himself. 

Dan had lived longer in Arkham than Herbert and it showed – he avoided the main street that they had approached the building on, opting instead for side roads and back alleyways. At one point they cut through someone’s overgrown backyard and hopped a fence. It was kind of a nonsense route but they never got close to the police sirens. For that Ash was very thankful. 

After all, how could he keep doing the fantastic job he was doing behind bars? 

Before Ash could get furious at himself they were back at the little house and Dan was pulling them inside and drawing curtains across windows just in case. He looked exhausted. Herbert noticed too and pushed Dan down onto the couch and patted at his shoulders, smoothing his rumpled shirt. 

“You should get some rest Dan,” he said in his best stern voice but Dan was shaking his head and trying to rise. 

“You’re bleeding Herbert,” he said, voice dead tired. “And I should see if Ash has any problems too.” 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Herbert said, brimming with frustration. “I’ll wipe it off. Ash and I should get going and you can say you were at home all day, if the police even come looking for you.” 

Ash agreed that they needed to get moving, to head north to where he could hear the last book calling from. It was close and it was insistent. Ash was pulled away from the book’s crying by the look on Dan’s face when Herbert said they would be leaving. He looked betrayed. 

“I’m going with you.” 

The words hung in the air for a moment, then Ash and Herbert were simultaneously shaking their heads and telling him no in different but equally forceful ways. Dan seemed poised to fight them for a moment, then deflated. His head dropped into his cupped hands as if his neck couldn’t be trusted to hold it up anymore. 

“I do want to help,” he muttered into his hands. 

“I know, and you have. But I won’t let you do this, and I’m willing to bet Ash won’t either.” They both looked up to him, for confirmation and Ash nodded as seriously as he could. “See? What he says goes. Please Dan, just get some rest.” 

Dan’s face was still cradled in his hands and he kept speaking into them but Ash couldn’t hear what he was saying. Herbert got up from the couch, rummaged in his bag for a moment and came back. The photo was hanging from his hand. He gently laid it in Dan’s lap, which stopped the incoherence. 

“I thought… I thought I had lost this or something.” He looked up into Herbert’s face and seemed to be on the edge of tears. “Herbert, you?” 

Herbert was no longer looking at Dan. “I’m sorry.” The words were a surprise even to Ash, who wondered if he should leave the room. Dan was surprised too and began to protest but Herbert cut him off. “Don’t pretend that I don’t owe you any apologies Dan. I’m sorry I took your photo. I’m sorry for…” He faltered, gestured vaguely around the empty house. “I’m sorry for everything.” Even in his apologizing state Herbert couldn’t bring himself to get specific. “I thought I should at least give back the picture I stole.” 

“No!” Dan’s voice had a watery edge but a solid core. He smoothed his hair with a shaky hand and started again. “No, you should hold on to it. Connections are important right? So you keep it as long as you need it. You just bring it back to me when you’re done alright?” He looked at Herbert intensely. “You hear me? You bring it back.” 

Herbert didn’t even speak, just took the photo back and moved back to his bag to put it back into its place. When he returned to the living room he stayed Ash’s side instead of returning to Dan. Already distancing himself, already saying goodbye silently. Dan rose to bid them farewell even as Herbert harrumphed at him to stay sitting. 

Ash smiled at the tired student, extended a hand. “I’ll do my best to make sure Herbert makes it back.” He thought it was a reassuring sort of thing to say but Dan looked slightly shocked and squeezed Ash’s hand. 

“You come back too! Make sure you both come back.” It was sincere and the generosity of spirit that coated the words warmed Ash to his core. It was an unusual sensation. He nodded, feeling the sudden lump in his throat. The small house filled with brief, quiet goodbyes and Dan walked them to the door. He watched as they climbed into Ash’s car and Herbert took one last moment to turn around. 

“Go to bed Dan,” he said in a good authoritative voice, the sort of voice a stern but caring doctor would have. Dan laughed, a happy sound in the chill air. Ash carefully backed out of the driveway and he couldn’t help but notice that Herbert didn’t take his eyes off of Dan, who waited patiently in the doorway for them to fully leave. 

“He’ll be alright,” Ash said softly. 

“He has to be,” was all Herbert said in reply. 

***

Herbert didn’t even have to ask where the final book was. It was speaking into him, almost screaming, and the pull was north, further north. His mouth tasted like bile and reagent and just a hint of rot. He swiped a wrist across his lips over and over as if that could get rid of the taste. 

Ash’s face was twisted with concentration and he looked green. Herbert didn’t want to just drive in silence. After all, it might well be the very last drive they ever had to sit through together. No, he didn’t want to think about after, about both of them dying, or just him or just Ash. He’d cross that bridge when he was forced to and no sooner. 

“What’s the likelihood that it’s a trap?” 

Ash snorted. “I’d put the percentage at 100. Honestly I’m a little surprised the evil me isn’t reaching out the rearview mirror already. He wanted all those Deadites to take me alive, in one piece.” 

Herbert shuddered. “No idea what they want still?” 

Ash shrugged. “He didn’t say. He did mention that we have some kind of connection that I’m too much of a coward to pursue, but Deadites can be fucking liars. Besides, I don’t even know if it would help.” 

“And you probably don’t want to try while you’re driving, just in case.” 

Ash laughed in surprise. “A proper scientific opinion!” Then he shifted in his seat. “I can’t imagine whatever he has planned is going to be pleasant. And I’m willing to bet it’s not just death either.” 

“That seems like a reasonable fear.” 

“This is sort of my way of offering you-“

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you no?” The question held far more incredulity than anger, despite the uncharacteristic profanity. 

Ash threw him a sideways glance. “Just the one last time. I only keep asking because if our positions were switched I would have taken the offer ages ago.” 

Herbert regarded Ash carefully. He was covered in drying blood and still too fresh wounds and he was driving into the mouth of a monster that wanted to chew him specifically and slowly. “I don’t think you would.” 

“That’s very kind of you.” 

“You seem to have forgotten – I don’t deal in kindness.” 

“Just facts,” Ash said and his voice was soft. “I am sorry though,” he continued and when Herbert began to protest he just carried on. “About what happened to you before, about what has happened to you since. I don’t care if you don’t want me to be – I am.” 

Herbert stopped protesting, since there wasn’t much point in fighting against general feelings of sympathy. “Well, thanks.” 

“I’ll apologize for trauma any old time. So, what do you think you might do after?” Herbert was surprised that Ash was even thinking about the future, even in the rosiest of terms. 

“Go back to Miskatonic and finish my degree, I guess. If they’ll have me back.” He remembered how Arkham had felt wrapped around him and his lip curled. “Then again, maybe not. You?” 

“Don’t know,” Ash said surprisingly placidly. “There’s not a lot for me back home, not many people to keep me there. People sort of drift away from you when you’re a death obsessed weirdo.” 

Herbert snorted. “You don’t have to tell me.” 

“How could I possibly forget?” Ash said with a laugh. “Sorry.” 

“No problem,” Herbert said and he could feel his tongue getting thick. The book was very close by now. Still, he pulled himself together and continued to dare talk about the future. “When all this is over we can start a death obsessed weirdo club and be co-presidents and tell everyone that being dead is garbage.” 

Ash chuckled but didn’t speak. He was winding through strange side roads, seemingly on instinct and the book’s voice was just getting worse and worse. Herbert’s teeth began to chatter even though he wasn’t cold. 

They took one last curve and there, nestled within the trees, was an old abandoned-looking warehouse. It squatted on the land like the rotting body of an animal. Herbert could feel otherworldly darkness pouring off of the thing. The car pulled to a stop and the two of them got out and stood a safe distance away. There was no sound of life from the forest. 

Herbert found his voice long enough to say “I’d say you’re right about the trap.” 

Ash was grim. “Looks like. Stay close.” Then, together, they stepped towards the building that Evil Ash was doubtlessly waiting within.


	15. Chapter 14

Ash didn’t bother with a jacket, didn’t bother with hiding anything. No one was here to hide from and he was already covered in dried blood and slime. If he could have one wish, one stray hope for when this whole affair was over, it was to never need to hide again. Fuck hiding. 

The double doors of the warehouse hung open, looking broken but benign. The building felt like Deadites, felt like their fevered aura, but it looked harmless enough. As harmless as a tetanus and snake deathtrap could anyway. 

Ash didn’t pause at the door, didn’t hesitate – instead he just strode in. The lights were already on, half burned out high up in their little metal cages. He could sense Herbert beside him, could hear him grumbling at the warehouse’s state. The thing had been packed haphazardly, tables and boxes and rusted metal shelves but mostly dust that coated every surface. Ash looked down, seeing if he could see tracks of any sort on the floor, but the thick layer of dust was undisturbed. As he and Herbert moved slowly into the space the dust was inevitably kicked up and it swirled in the pools of light, almost beautiful. Ash sneezed. 

The only sound in the place was coming from the two of them, the soft shuffle of their feet and the occasional whisper. Ash didn’t know if they really needed to be quiet – the Deadites must know they were there. Still, they kept as quiet as possible, mostly just confirming that neither of them saw anything. 

“I can feel them here though,” Herbert whispered and his voice sounded slightly strained. 

“Yeah,” Ash said, just to stave off complete silence. “You doing alright?” 

“Yes,” Herbert said and he sounded somewhat puzzled. “The pressure isn’t bad – if I were feeling optimistic I might say that nothing was trying to get in.” Ash turned to look at the scientist in the gloom. Herbert looked fine beyond the expected nervousness just under his steel façade. 

“That’s… odd. Very odd. Let me know if it changes, alright?” 

Herbert just nodded and the two of them went back to exploring the overstuffed room. The book was here somewhere, Ash could hear it, but the voice was fuzzy, obscured somehow now that they were in the building. The only thing to do, really, was to look among the abandoned garbage. Maybe his twin had just left it somewhere. Right. 

Still, the two of them poked around, never straying too far away from the other. They hadn’t been searching long when Herbert let frustration overtake him. “What do they even want from us?” he said, voice still soft but full of anger. 

Ash swiveled back to him, to try and sooth his ire, but before any words could leave his mouth something began to happen to the windows. Some substance was flowing down them thick and slow, like molasses, like blood, but as dark as a goddamn night. It choked out the daylight as it descended and the already dim warehouse grew darker. 

“Don’t you know not to do that?!” Ash snapped as fear lanced down his spine. “Haven’t you ever watched horror movies?!” 

I was busy!” Herbert replied, anger not quite coving his own fear. He seemed on the verge of saying more when above them the lights began to flicker ominously and then, one by one, they went out. 

“Herbert!” Ash said and as he said it he groped forward, hoping to grab the scientist. He banged his shin into something in the dark and swore loudly. No point in being quiet if any sort of noise might help Herbert locate him in the dark. 

“Ash!” he heard, close by but still out of reach. They were close though, he could feel it. Just another stretch or two and-

Suddenly two hands grabbed Ash around his ankles and yanked. The force combined with the surprise ended up throwing Ash to the floor, knocking the breath out of him. He tried to wheeze out another call to Herbert when the grip on his legs tightened and then began to drag him at high speed across the floor. In the opposite direction of where Herbert’s voice had come from. Relentlessly Ash was pulled into the darkness and he couldn’t even scream. 

***

Herbert heard a thump and a wheeze ahead of him and his stomach dropped out. “Ash?” All that came out of the darkness was the sound of something being drug across the floor and muffled banging, all of it travelling away from him. Herbert half-turned and froze, not sure if he should go after the noise, which was likely Ash, or run away. He only hesitated a moment but his choice was made for him; something wrapped around each of his legs and pulled. As he fell backwards Herbert screamed, half in terror and half to give Ash some idea of what was happening, if Ash could even hear him anymore. 

His back connected solidly with the concrete floor and Herbert groaned in pain with what breath he had left. He tucked both of his arms into his chest, to protect his bandaged hand and his bag, which was still heavy with extra reagent. He bounced one way and then another off of random, decaying items and even as he struggled futilely he could feel bruises rising up hot on his skin. Without warning he was pivoted straight up and was suddenly falling forward. Herbert twisted as best he could in midair and then he crashed down, catching most of the blow with his shoulder and only a little with his cheekbone. Laying dazed on the floor Herbert thought he must have looked like a cartoon there for a moment. Behind him a door clicked shut and the hallway before him rang with the finality of it. 

He was half tempted to just keep lying on the floor. Instead he waited until his breath came back and then scrambled to his feet. He was in some side hallway and it was dark but for a red light at the other end of the space. As Herbert looked at it the light began to pulse. He bared his teeth at the darkness. He wasn’t going to let some light get the better of him. 

Herbert took one careful step forward, then another. Nothing happened so he took a third step. Then, at the edge of his hearing, there was a soft dry splitting sound. Herbert turned, trying to catch the sound but he couldn’t see any difference in the hallway, even as he heard the sound again and again. It was always at the edge of his perception. The sound wasn’t just on the floor either, but on the walls and ceiling. It sounded like the muted crumble of dry concrete shifting. It sounded like the whisper of breath over cracked, fevered lips. 

Herbert decided it was time to run. 

He had only made it one staggering step when the red light at the end of the hall flared and he could finally see what must have been making the noise. The walls and floor were riddled with splits that Herbert would have sworn weren’t there before. Even as he looked they widened and shifted. Now, clearly, they were jagged grey mouths and in a blink thick, warty tongues extended from them and began to taste the room. 

Yes, running. What good ideas he had! 

He didn’t make it very far before once of the searching tongues found him, snaking eagerly around his wrist. Herbert jolted to a stop and yanked his arm back and forth all while keeping tight hold of his bag. The loss of forward momentum made him much easier prey for the other tongues though and they quickly took advantage of his immobility. They wrapped around his legs, his other arm, and they licked at his other flesh besides. He twisted this way and that until one enterprising tongue found his neck and wrapped around it like a collar, discouraging movement. Still, he kept tugging as much as he dared, desperate to get away. Somewhere in his brain an unhelpful neuron fired and reminded him that the tongue was one of the strongest muscles in the body. 

One tongue wound lazily in the direction of his face and Herbert shuddered as he remembered the book licking into his ear when he was possessed. He shut his mouth tight and debated whether he should close his eyes as well. No, better to see what was happening. The thing veered at the last moment and moved instead towards the hand that had been caught first. As it grew closer Herbert watched the thing split and the newly smaller slivers pushed against the bandage that was still wound around his palm. There were four tendrils and they probed the bandage carefully, finally slipping underneath it. Herbert had no idea what they were doing and tried to block out the distractions of all the other tongues to focus. 

Each part of the split tongue found the old crescent wounds Herbert had cut into his palms while dreaming Ash’s life. The slick tendrils pushed against the wounds and suddenly Herbert understood. Gasping he wrenched his hand away and was rewarded with the wet sound of tearing muscle as the tongue holding him gave some. 

These things wanted inside his wounds and he could not let them. He was not sure he could bear the consequences. 

Now that blood had been drawn and Herbert had doubled his struggling the tongues grew more aggressive, bolder. They tried to snake under the tight bandages on his burned hand and they took to pressing down hard against his skin even where there wasn’t a tear they could enter. Herbert yanked himself back and forth, shredding the sticky muscles that held him in place. One extra feral yank tore enough of the tongues holding his upper body that pitched forward and fell. The moment he hit the ground, the moment he crushed tongues beneath him and felt the floor mouths open wider beneath him he began the knife-edge, desperate work of pulling himself forward to the exit. 

The tongues did their best to stop him but Herbert bit and clawed and he had filled with the strength of oblivion, with the knowledge that if he didn’t get out of this hallway he would be lost and his very soul would be torn apart and swallowed down by all these greedy mouths. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint and for awhile he could not be sure that he was breathing. As he got closer to the doors the mouths began to howl and the sound pierced through his eardrums and tried to hook into his brain. Just another point of entry. Herbert screamed back his wordless defiance and then, somehow, he was at the door and he was clawing off the last bits clinging to his legs and then he tumbled through the thin particle board door backwards and slammed it shut with a savage kick. The tongues did not follow him through and he lay on the tile for a moment just catching his breath. 

Then Herbert rolled over and found himself in the deeply familiar lab of Miskatonic University. 

***

The hands had drug Ash along the floor and then thrown him through a door. Not into it, through it, like one of those damn Olympians with the ball on the chain. The door splintered inward under the force of his trajectory and Ash lay on the floor and tried the blink the spots out of his eyes. Distantly he was happy he didn’t land on his back, on top of his still holstered gun. Cause that would have _really_ hurt. 

Ash hadn’t collected himself yet when two sets of hands extended out of the darkness and wrapped around his upper arms. When his legs didn’t come up underneath him to their satisfaction the strangers just drug him across the floor. Ash struggled to rally, to regain some control over the situation. He was just managing to when the hands in the darkness pulled him around the corner and he was briefly blinded by fluorescent lights. 

There, in a semicircle, were a brace of students. Their scrubs gave them away from medical students and they sat there still as stone, faces blank. Which was surprising considering just what was dragging him into the room. 

They were grey, both of them, except for the thick stain of red at their chins where the unending burble of blood from their mouths dripped. Their eyes were vacant and each of them had a small hole burned into their left temple. Their naked bodies sagged as if life could only puppet certain parts of them at certain times. They were dead, deeply dead, and had been reanimated. Even if Ash didn’t have Herbert’s experiences in his brain he would have recognized them from that very first meeting, the one reanimated body he had ever seen…

But it wasn’t just one, no. There was a second reanimated body, one he saw in every reflective surface. Ice settled in the pit of his stomach. 

Ahead of them now was a shining metal table and at the head of it stood Hill’s headless body. The head itself rested in a pan and it was already pontificating of will of the brain. The students held still as he spoke, not taking notes, not even blinking. Ash finally had enough control over his limbs to try and jerk out of his captors’ grasps. Their dead fingers didn’t bend in the slightest and they lifted him easily and sent him crashing to the tabletop. Ash convulsed, trying to just flop himself off of the cold surface but they were on him again, holding his limbs down as effectively as any leather straps. Maybe more effectively. 

Ash twisted his head around to look at Hill’s still speaking head. He had a glint in his eye that Ash didn’t like. 

“If one is secure in their own will and simultaneously knows how to manipulate the location of will in others then you can physically alter the brain and thus impose your will onto others. The results of such experimentation are before you, clearly successful. Today I will be demonstrating the precise technique for you on this subject here.” Above Ash Hill’s hand gestured awkwardly but expansively. He didn’t like this shit one bit. 

Before he could struggle he heard a question ring out in the silent room. The voice turned his blood to ice. “Dr. Hill this subject appears to be alive!” 

Hill’s head chuckled inside its pan. “An astute observation Mr. West. Would you like to come forward and examine the subject closer? You will find that it is not experiencing life, just a robust facsimile.” 

To his left a dark shape loomed and all too quickly it took the form of Herbert West. Or, more accurately, a Deadite Herbert West. His teeth were all bared in a nasty smile. But even as Ash looked at Herbert’s body he couldn’t see the human in it at all. It was like looking at Evil Ash. Or at something that wasn’t really there. He needed to figure out which it was quickly. 

Evil Herbert leaned down, eyes twinkling, and raked his gaze over Ash’s face, studying and mocking him all at once. “Why Dr. Hill!” he said loudly, right into Ash’s immobilized face, “he is dead! Imagine that – so much meaningless meat still walking around like it can do something.” 

Ash didn’t bother to even respond to the jab – he just strained against the two corpses holding him down. Whether this was a hallucination or not he wanted out. His hallucinations left bruises. 

Above him Hill’s hand was moving, lifting something that looked as innocuous as a glue gun but Ash knew it wasn’t. Evil Herbert hadn’t retaken his seat. Instead he was gripping the edge of the table and leaning into Ash as much as he could while not obstructing the procedure. 

“You know what sound I love?” he whispered and Ash ignored him because he was still trying to escape. He was rocking back and forth now, a course of action that barely counted as a plan formulating in his mind. The Deadite didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t listening. “I love the sound of your screams. I have lived millennia and I cannot recall a scream sweeter than yours. Most of the corpses Hill scrambles don’t ever make a sound again but I hope you scream.” He leaned in closer, his nose almost brushing Ash’s. “I hope you scream forever.” 

The laser drill was descending now and Ash could feel a pinpoint of heat at his temple. Instead of screaming (like he wanted to do but he refused to give the Deadite the satisfaction) he thrust his head forward in a vicious head butt. While Evil Herbert fell back howling Hill flinched away, which gave Ash an opening. He set his body to rocking violently and the table’s little metal feet clattered against the tile. 

“I don’t care what he wants!” Evil Herbert was shrieking as black slime dripped out of his crushed nose. “I am going to kill you right here!” 

The declaration gave Ash the last little surge of adrenaline he needed and with one last rock he overturned the table. The sudden change broke the grip of one of the corpses and threw the other one off. Ash drug the bewildered thing over the flipped table and one of the legs caught the corpse in the torso just right, impaling it. Ash wrenched his arm free and scrabbled to the far door. The only sounds behind him were the shrieked curses of Evil Herbert, the growls of Hill, and the confused moans of the two dead. Ash’s one hand trembled against the knob and it slipped for a moment. Terror surged through him because if they caught him again there would be no preamble and they would cut the will out of him with a laser and he’d be lost. Evil Herbert’s voice was closer but Ash finally got a solid hold on the knob and scrambled through as small a crack as he could navigate. 

The moment he passed through the door it melted away. Silence engulfed him. All around him was rough, blood spattered wood and darkness and a strange cabin that he knew all too well. A dirty bandage was wrapped around his recently shorn wrist. He couldn’t stop the tears that welled up in his eyes. No, all Ash could do was fall to his knees and howl. 

***

Herbert’s heart was thundering too hard for him to think properly, the sound of his blood drowning out the sound of his thoughts. He didn’t stop to analyze how he had gotten here or what exactly was going on because his adrenaline was making demands of him, spurring him forward. 

“Dan,” he said to the empty room and before he could fully process what exactly he was doing he scrabbled to his feet and was sprinting from the room. The medical school was silent, as still as death but that didn’t bother him now. Nor did the emptiness of the streets of Arkham. The town still slid over his skin like scum on a pond and Herbert shuddered even as he ran as fast and as far as he ever had. 

He didn’t stop until he reached the little house he and Dan had shared those brief months. He didn’t even stop at the door – it flew inward under his touch and he barreled in after it. The house was quiet and dark and finally the surroundings were striking Herbert an ominous. His feet wouldn’t stop though and he deftly navigated through the dark. As he passed Dan’s room he heard his first noise since finding himself in Arkham and he turned. 

“Dan?” he called softly. The room was dark and smelled of blood. The hairs on the back of Herbert’s neck stood up. He stepped inside carefully and groped in the darkness for a light. Under his fingers it clicked on innocuously. 

Across the room, seated comfortably in a chair, was Meg Halsey. Her face was quietly contented but her cheeks were sunken, her skin was sallow and her eyes were the pure white of the Deadites. She was petting something in her lap and Herbert’s eyes travelled downward. Dan’s head rested there, torn from his body, blood soaking her legs and pooling on the floor. Meg grinned wider as she wound her hand in Dan’s dark, matted hair. She might be alive and dead all at once, but Dan was simply dead. 

Part of Herbert screamed at him to run, but most of him just felt like all the vital organs had fallen out. His voice had died and his legs were on the verge of following suit. His vision narrowed and darkened. Somehow he kept his feet. 

“No,” he breathed out, not really aware he was even talking. “No.” Herbert’s voice was all flat denial. At his tone Meg grinned wider. The expression took on a toxic edge. 

“As happy to see me as ever Mr. West. Care to join us?” 

Herbert didn’t move – it was as though his feet were nailed to the ground. This wasn’t possible for so many reasons and his mind raced through all of them at once. It was paralyzing. Somehow his mouth found some words. Unfortunately they weren’t especially incisive. 

“This isn’t happening.” 

“Oh no?” Meg stood up and Dan’s head thumped wetly to the ground. A small whine escaped Herbert’s lips. “You doubt my reality?” She was within arm’s length now and one of her hands shot up and grabbed a hank of his hair. She twisted her fingers in viciously and brought her face very close to his. “Do I seem real now?” 

The pain was real, that was true. Herbert clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t give the Deadite the satisfaction of knowing it hurt. Still, this wasn’t real, this couldn’t possibly be happening. 

“You were buried!” he said as coolly as he could, but the pain and fear forced a slight rise in tone. 

“You remember Mr. West.” Her voice was honeyed, too sweet and still not sweet enough to cover up the edge of gleeful hatred. “You remember the skeleton army of the past. What good does burial do? We don’t need it.” 

Herbert did remember the massive army of the dead, so that point was moot. Still, his brain refused this. Exhaustion hit him and he sagged against Meg’s hand. Sneering she ripped it away, taking hair and scalp with her. Herbert blinked, blinked again, tried to focus. Meg bared her teeth at him and stepped forward, seemingly intent on more violence. Herbert put his hands up and staggered back a step. It seemed to be the wrong move as Meg swiped a claw sideways and seized both of his wrists, wrenching his arms upwards. His doctor bag clattered to the floor. Meg yanked him back into the stinking room and continued to haul upward. Herbert was on tip toe and nose to nose with her impossible face. 

“You wouldn’t hurt him,” he whispered, or at least he thought he whispered it out loud. “You would never hurt him. Me, I understand. Not him.” Meg laughed in his face. 

“After what he did to me? After he used your work to bring me back to life?!” She had lifted him so high now that his feet couldn’t touch the ground and he could hear the bones in his wrists grinding against one another. Despite his resolve to not make any noise little sounds of pain were still escaping his throat. Meg shook him once, twice, very experimentally. 

Herbert had gone pale at her words. That last scream was clear in his mind, clear and sharp as glass and it was echoing through him. All the past he so carefully packed away was leaching out and he was awash in it. He shook and Meg laughed again at his helplessness. 

Herbert looked straight into those cruel white eyes and even though she was impossible, even though this couldn’t be happening he couldn’t let this moment pass. Words weighed down on his guts, old words he thought he would never get the chance to say. Might as well say them now in case she was in there. 

“I’m sorry Meg.” His voice was low and his breath was shallow but the words were clear. The Deadite blinked but didn’t let go. Herbert pushed on. “I’m sorry about everything – about your father and what happened to you. It was never my intention for people to die. I’m sorry.” 

Meg snorted but something around her edges wavered. “Do you really think that’s good enough?” 

“No,” Herbert said, shaking his head as best he could in between his trapped arms. “No, of course not. But I am sorry.” Meg growled right into his face and threw him down to the floor. Herbert’s head struck a bedpost and when he looked up he couldn’t tell if it was the blow to the head or something else that made her edges blur. He blinked and focused and no, she was still blurring oddly. He didn’t know of any Deadite that had done that. A weird strangled hope and certainty buzzed in his chest. 

Meg turned to his prone body and she was all fury. She took a few stiff legged steps forward and snarled even as her features swayed between grey anonymity and raging Meg. Her hands were tight clenched claws are her sides. Herbert tried to push himself back along the floor even as his limbs didn’t want to listen. 

“You think that matters?! None of it matters! It’s over! You have doomed yourself.” She stalked forward haltingly and each word was carved of hate and spat at him. “By your own flesh, your own blood; by your own precious breath you are doomed.” She was looming over him now, burning white eyes in a dark shadow and Herbert only just managed to stay on his knees and look into the face of what he was sure would be his killer. 

Meg stretched her arms out to either side and screamed. It was a scream he knew well, loud and long and piercing. As she screamed she drew even closer and even as the sound blocked out everything else Herbert was forced to watch as Meg peeled apart. The sound tore skin from her muscles and then began to flay the muscles apart. The shrieking somehow got louder. It was all he could see, could hear, could feel and even as he so desperately wanted to look away the muscle was stripped from bone and then even the bone began to turn to dust as if whipped away in the furious gale of a wind tunnel. It was a maelstrom of hate and Herbert breathed her in and choked. 

And then she was gone, scream lasting just a moment longer than the body. Herbert had collapsed and found himself on the tile floor of the Miskatonic lab. He lay there one moment and tried to will the shaking to stop. A few minutes passed and Herbert felt steady enough to push himself up off the floor-

There on the table was Dan’s severed head and when Herbert’s eyes met Dan’s closed ones they snapped open. Dan bared his teeth and hissed “You bastard!” 

Herbert flung himself back screaming and the sharp jagged metal of a broken shelf cut into his side, leaving a ragged gash. He fell forwards to his hands and knees and just focused on breathing. He was back in the warehouse, away from his past. Away from the possibly dead or undead. Even as he reached back to check his wounded side he felt it gum up with a mixture of reagent and blood. Ahead of him a door creaked open. Herbert stayed on the floor for a minute, just catching his breath. But there was no choice but to go forward. Herbert scooped up his bag and moved on. 

***

Ash’s heart was thundering all through him even as he repeated to himself “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.” His memories were still sharp – he could still recall everything that happened after this point and they didn’t seem to be fading. That, at least, was a positive. 

Everything was as he remembered it – the fresh pain in his still bleeding stump, the shock he had fought off because he had to, the old creaking of the cabin that could be soft, malicious whispers. His hand skittered inside the wall. Any moment know he’d fall and the whole world would mock him. Ash got preemptive goosebumps. Wait. That meant that-

There was a sound outside and it wasn’t the sound he expected. Other human beings would be showing up soon, that was the next piece of this nightmare, but this was like claws drug lightly along the wood. This wasn’t the sound he remembered. Ash stood frozen in the cabin’s living room and wondered what he should do. His lips still formed his mantra over and over again, silently. The sound stopped and Ash, after a long moment’s hesitation, stepped closer to the wall. He leaned sideways to peek out the boarded up window. The misty forest was empty. After a few seconds he leaned out farther, trying to catch a helping glimpse. 

Out of nowhere a rotting arm swung at his face, smashing into his nose. Ash staggered back yelping and fell to the dusty floor. He gathered himself, rising to his hands and knees. He expected laughter or for the assailant to fight their way inside but nothing happened. He felt thick fluid course slowly down his face. When it dripped to the floor it was the purest neon green. Eyes widening Ash let out a thin hiss and shuffled backwards from the sight. Terror constricted his throat. Even as he escaped the spotting on the threadbare rug his nose kept bleeding and it began to fall onto his chest, his arms. Green green green – no trace of blood marred the reagent. Ash pushed his good hand to his nose, desperate to staunch the flow even as the pressure ached. Wind began to whistle through the cracks in the walls. 

Looking about wildly Ash spotted the mirror in the front hall and decided to risk it. He had to know. Still, he pulled up just outside of the reach of his reflection’s arms, just in case. Slowly he pulled his hand away from his face. 

The reagent was still flowing, slow but steady and brilliantly green. It moved over his lips and fell off of his chin in slow drips. Ash began to breathe faster and shallower and struggled to regain control of himself. Then his eyes drifted up to the rest of his face. 

His irises were that same glowing green. No trace of their original brown showed through. 

No scream could ever pass through a throat so constricted but that didn’t mean that Ash didn’t try. He fell away from the mirror and tried to press both his hand and his stump to his face but he stopped when he saw his bandage was stained lime. 

This was wrong, this was wrong, this was _wrong_ and Ash whirled around the room looking desperately for some clue as to what he should do. His mind flashed back to Dr. Hill’s operating table. Dead the whole time…

The wind was howling stronger now and Ash was feeling light headed. He was shaking in the cold, strong gusts but there was more than that; he felt the evil back inside of him. He hadn’t felt it since the windmill, since his evil had been ripped out, but now it was back and it was not even wrapping around and through him. No, it was _in_ him, feeling fat and happy inside his very cells, hiding behind organelles, puncturing the nucleus. Deep seated, eternal. There. 

Ash wanted to run in every single direction at once, to tear himself to pieces with the very force of his fear and despair. The wind was trilling now, the holes in the wood producing sounds like laughter. Of course it was laughter. It could be nothing else. 

“The door,” Ash said out loud to himself, hoping any voice, even his own, could galvanize him. “There’s got to be a door out. Where?” He was panting now, bending his whole shaky will to getting out. If they wanted to trap him then the door would be exactly where he wouldn’t want to go. And where wouldn’t he want to go? 

Into the woods. 

The evil was inside already inside him though – the thing that chased him had partially caught him already. What did he have to lose? 

“Everything,” Ash said to no one, to his tormentors. He wasn’t sure he could be heard over the primal howling of the Earth. 

He made his decision quickly, firmly, just so he didn’t have to think about it anymore. He bolted for the back door, slamming through whatever thin obstacles the cabin threw up in his way. Then he was out and the cold air whipped around him even more strongly, no longer barred by what passed for walls. He felt the thing behind him, felt it breathing on his soul’s neck. He ran. 

He didn’t feel like he was gaining any ground, like he was getting away in the slightest, but he kept running because he could not go back. The wind gusts were so strong he thought they might lift him off the ground and dash him against the trees. Even as he ran he mouthed to himself “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.” In his heart he hoped desperately that if he said it enough it would finally reveal itself to be true. 

All at once, with no warning, he was back in the warehouse, slamming full speed into a door. The knob pushed hard against his side and Ash couldn’t be sure if his rib had finally broken. He wheezed against the door in the darkness. His nose was still bleeding and he wondered what color it was. 

When Ash went to open the door he realized that the force of him running into it had broken the knob. He simply pushed it open and stepped forward into the darkness. 

In the center of the room, on a spotlit slab, lay Ash’s cold, dead body. Just barely within the doorway Ash put his two, whole hands to his face and screamed. 

***

Herbert found himself in another room of the warehouse, as overstuffed and dusty as the first massive room they had found themselves in. He paused for a moment in the threshold, wondering why it was so calm, so normal. He didn’t trust it. 

He could even see the door from where he stood; sure, there was a maze of junk between him and it but it was still plainly visible. Maybe the Deadites were done with tricks. Maybe they were worn out. 

Herbert still moved slowly into the room and kept his eyes peeled. Despite his heightened vigilance he managed to walk face first into a hanging mobile of gourds. He pulled back from the lightly clattering things, puzzled. Where had they come from? Herbert quickly looked around and realized that much of the junk had fallen away in the gloom and had been replaced by, well, different junk. Waterlogged wood and rough stone and it smelled like dirt and old bones, not dust and metal. He had only blinked and the door was gone, the warehouse was gone. A chilly damp settled down onto his skin. He turned a circle, taking in his surroundings. 

The cabin’s basement. All his knowledge of it was second hand, but that was enough to get him moving. He searched the near darkness for the hatch door and the steps up. He did not want to be down here any longer than he had too. 

Bones hung from the ceiling smacked softly into his face and he thought perhaps he heard the sound of a bloated body dragging across the dirt floor. He moved faster, keeping his breathing steady. The stairs loomed ahead of him and Herbert scrambled up them, using both his hands and feet and not caring. Damp soft wood stuck under his nails, rubbed off on his bag. He’d smell like basement for days if he made it out of here. 

Herbert pressed one hand against the door above him and pushed, expecting it to swing open. It started, but was arrested by chains wound over the top. He wouldn’t even be able to get his head out. Panic began to bubble up inside of him. 

“Hey,” he called hesitantly and his voice was rewarded with the light sound of feet walking across wood. He decided to take it as a good sign. “Hey!” There were two sets of footsteps now and they almost seemed to be coming towards him. Herbert thought about reaching a hand out, but worried he would just be inviting a stomping. 

Herbert felt a stirring in the dark behind him and he rattled at the door more. “Please, let me out of here! There’s something down here!” The two people were coming towards him now, but they remained silent. Herbert blinked and pulled back some. Why weren’t they saying anything? 

There was no warning when there was a sound of wet tearing and one of the figures fell. Her throat had been torn open and when her head struck the floor some arterial blood splashed onto Herbert’s face. He flinched backwards and almost fell down the stairs. The other figure swayed and fell, facing away from the basement. Blood pooled somehow and the flow was angled towards the hatch door. Herbert didn’t want any more strangers’ blood on him and he scrambled away from the door. Still, he hesitated on the stairs. As far as he knew above him was the only way out. 

Somewhere ahead of him Herbert heard heavy footsteps. 

There was something out in the dark, he could feel it. And he could feel that it was looking for him, that it wanted him under foot and claw. As quietly as he could Herbert slipped back into the basement. Somewhere an old record began to play, slow and scratchy and dissonant. It itched at his skin. 

Herbert wove through the basement but his pattern didn’t matter – the thing was still at his heels. He could feel fingers running along his spine, somehow under his shirt and he twisted this way and that to stop it. Nothing worked. Fat pipes above him dripped something hot and sticky down his neck. He ran faster, faster still, but it wasn’t working. He wasn’t getting away. 

He tripped, fell sprawling to the dirt and the presence of the thing was overwhelming, on top of him. He curled up into a ball and just shuddered, hoping the thing would go away. It poked at him instead, first one side and then the other. Claws dug furrows into the dirt on either side of his head. A hot, spectral breath tickled along his skin, drawing goosebumps and a sudden drop in temperature. The weight of the past week pressed down on every limb, adding to the presence’s pressure and suddenly it was all too much. Fear flooded Herbert’s brain and nothing else could function. 

Nothing changed but suddenly, strangely, everything was different. He was still being slowly terrorized but he felt another presence beside him. It was as if, between him and this horror, was Ash, hunched over and shaking but still shielding him. It was a reminder – somewhere in this fucking warehouse what Ashley, doing his best to reach Herbert and end this. It helped immeasurably to be reminded that he wasn’t alone, even here. 

“C’mon you little bastard, you’re tougher than they are.” Herbert heard it even though it was a distant, hazy memory, one he hadn’t even been fully awake for. The things claws were closing around him but Herbert crawled forward quickly, slipping between them. 

He was tougher than this, than them. They weren’t going to stop him here. 

Herbert groped forward blindly in the darkness, searching for anything that might serve as a weapon. He shifted his bag to his bandaged hand and felt in the dark with his right. He found a rough piece of wood that was somehow not rotting and damp and he wrenched it from the disordered pile. The thing was on him now, chuckling and reaching and Herbert wheeled around to face its presence. He thrust his makeshift stake forward, straight into the foul center of the thing. It let out half an agonized shriek-

And then the stake was just stuck in the door out, vibrating with force. Herbert took a full breath, his first in minutes, and looked at how deeply he had thrust the wood into the door. They would not stop him. 

***

Ash didn’t hurt at all – the new wounds that had been plaguing him for the past week were gone. In fact, many nagging injuries he had picked up back in the 13th century and back in the cabin were gone too. His right hand was restored. 

Ash stared at it in horror and considered just trying to rip it off with his teeth right now. 

The body on the slab hadn’t moved and it was still clearly him. Him with all those wounds, him with the bare right wrist. Him with his throat ripped out and all his scabs and wounds were just red, no hint of green at all. Across the room there was a floor length mirror. 

Ash kept his distance from his dead body. He felt like vomiting. At the end of his wide swath Ash found himself in front of the mirror. He was whole – even his facial scars didn’t look as bad as they had. His hair was a regular, glossy black unmarred by the white stripe he had gotten used to. In the mirror he smiled and he felt the action happen precisely on his face. 

“Of course,” he said but he did not choose to say it. He was speaking, smiling and it wasn’t him but it was. “Of course it’s me. That fool died a long time ago. The plan has worked out perfectly.” 

Ash crammed both of his hands over his mouth, wanting nothing more on earth than to stop the words. And they did stop – he stared at his reflection for a moment, frightened and silent. It looked like him. Slowly he drew his hands away. 

“This was always the plan,” said his voice, smooth and calm. “He was dead all along so of course I was there. I am always there when he’s dead. He is ours when he’s dead. He was ours this whole time.” Even as he spoke his reflection shuddered because Ash himself was shuddering. This couldn’t possibly be real. There was no way. 

Even as he thought it Ash felt a shroud settle over his mind. He was filled with the urge to simply sit down and wait. After all, the plan had gone perfectly – the fool was here, dead unfortunately, but here and his job was done. The dead could be very patient when they wanted to be. 

He stared into his face in the mirror and a part of him was yelling, stamping its feet. He had not been dead this whole time! He had felt pain and happiness and despair and fear. He had been alive, damn it! As this corner of mind catalogued all the things that made him alive and not dead he stepped forward. That part almost seemed like Herbert, like a keen eyed and furious scientist that was tired of being ignored. Ash reached his right hand, the one he had been missing so long, towards the flat reflective surface. “May I welcome you back to the land of the living?” he heard in his memory, the pride and happiness in Herbert’s voice like an anchor. In the mirror his eyes were a milky white, the planes of his face content. Ash’s right hand curled into a fist. 

He smashed the mirror then and the shards fell around the stump of his right wrist. All at once his aches and pains returned. He could feel the stickiness of drying blood on his face. He was tired without being sleepy, exhausted really. He was himself again, his actual self. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that there was no slab, no body, just a haphazard pile of dusty desks. Slowly, deliberately, Ash ground the shards of mirror under his heels. 

“I’m not your monster,” he whispered into the darkness. “I’m mine.” 

Once he was satisfied all the mirror was destroyed he stepped to the plain door in the wall. He had to keep moving. 

***

Herbert was ready for some fresh horror, but the room he found himself in was pretty much like the very first room of the warehouse. The last room had taught him that that didn’t mean anything and he hesitated at the wall. Across the room there was a noise and Herbert peered through the gloom. He watched as a door opened and Ash stepped into the room. The tall man was bloody but he looked determined. He looked across the room himself and saw Herbert. 

Neither of them made a noise. Instead Herbert just raised his good hand and Ash did the same, as if they could reach each other across the wide, clogged expanse. Then they both set to getting across the room and to one another as quickly as possible. 

Herbert could hear Ash just shoving abandoned furniture to the side bullishly and he couldn’t help but laugh to himself. For his part Herbert was picking his way around the obstacles quickly, kicking some and vaulting over others. Soon. They’d be back together soon. 

Then Herbert was hit with a stench that was building up all around him. It was blood, but not the metallic tang of fresh blood that he knew so well. No, this had a sourer note, like it had been stagnating somewhere and rotting. He looked down and could see dark liquid pooling around his shoes, flowing from nowhere, still rising. Even as he watched it came over the tops of his shoes and he felt it begin to soak into his socks. 

“Ash!” he yelled and at the very same time he heard a “Herbert!” from not very far away. He pushed forward with a greater intensity and more feral energy. The blood kept rising, faster now, and Herbert was fighting against the gagging his body wanted to do. The liquid was up to his knees now. He could hear Ash sloshing through it ahead of him. 

Despite how hard he was pushing and how hard he was sure Ash was pushing it was achingly slow reaching one another. The blood was at his waist, at his armpits and suddenly his feet left the floor. He was floating in the fetid pool and he fought against rising panic. “Ash,” he called again, keeping his voice calm. “You still there?” 

“Yeah!” came the call from the darkness. He was spluttering a little, probably because of getting some of the rotted blood in his mouth. As the blood kept rising it lapped at Herbert’s chin and he kept his mouth closed and rode the rising tide up. He quickly cleared the junk in the room and could see Ash again. Ash saw him too and they began to swim towards one another, leading with their good hands. 

Herbert had the feeling that if they could just reach one another it would somehow be alright. This was nonsense, of course, but he couldn’t banish the feeling. They were close now, so close, and Herbert stretched, then cried out as he felt claws rake his ankles. He peered down at the blood and could somehow see through the thick liquid – it was Meg and Dan and Hill and Halsey, all dead and all determined to drag him down below the surface. Nearby he heard Ash cry out too and Herbert could only assume that the same thing was happening to him. Herbert kicked once, twice, but there were too many of them and they got hold of his legs and began to drag him under. He struggled as hard as he ever had, lungs burning, but he refused utterly to take any of that rotted blood in. 

He could still see Ash – they were both submerged and so close. At once they both stretched their hands out, fingertips brushing. Herbert was almost out of air. Then, from all around them, the voice of Evil Ash. 

“Wait. I want them alive.” 

Then there was a massive cracking sound and the floor far below them fell away. Blood poured down into the newly formed hole and it pulled Herbert and Ash with it. As darkness loomed before him Herbert lost consciousness, falling down and down and down.


	16. Chapter 15

Ash woke slowly amidst the susurration of five books. Their words were soft and wove over his skin. It was comforting and Ash felt his muscles loosen. A whisper passed his lips, a soft “Kandaar…” and suddenly his bloodstream flooded with chemicals as instincts kicked in and woke him. He tried to jerk upright and rough rope cut into his wrists and his ankles. The pain stopped him and Ash took quick stock of his situation. 

He was on his knees in what seemed to be an empty basement. Old candles were scattered about and light filter down a jagged hole in the ceiling. The one they must have fell through he realized. He was still sticky with fetid blood. He was bound firmly, wrists and ankles tied together and to each other, immobilizing him. His shirt had been torn haphazardly leaving much of his chest bare. Across from him was Herbert, seemingly tied up the same way but slumped in unconsciousness. 

“Herbert!” Ash pulled again, trying to leverage his increased strength to break his simple bonds but they held. He wrenched his body around as much as he could but the rope just cut in deeper. Ash felt himself teetering on the edge of panic. 

“You’re not going to be able to break those ropes.” Evil Ash stepped out of the darkness dusting his hands together. Blood dripped from them and Ash could tell by the smell that it was whatever passed for Deadite blood. He turned his head and got a whiff of the same scent off of his rope bonds. Evil Ash smiled. “Yes, just a little trick documented in the Necronomicon. Those bonds will last as long as I do so you might as well quit struggling and tearing yourself up.” Ash eyed his double and stopped struggling. For now. 

“You gonna finally tell me what the fuck you want me for?” Ash focused on cloaking himself in anger if only to keep the howling fear at bay. 

“Yes, I think it is about that time but I think our friend should be awake for it.” Evil Ash leaned down to Herbert, bring his mouth close to the scientist’s ear. “Wake up Herbert. We’re waiting for you.” 

Herbert stirred, groaned softly. “Ash?” he said when he was half awake. 

“Herbert!” Ash called but Herbert wasn’t completely awake yet and he turned towards the closer source of the voice. He blinked into Evil Ash’s face. 

“Close enough darling,” the Deadite purred. Herbert jerked away and quickly came up against his own restraints. He fought hard for a moment and then glared at the Deadite. Evil Ash ignored his rage and turned back to Ash. He smiled, almost kindly. A trick. 

“Ashley here wanted to know what I plan to do with him and I thought you should be awake to hear it too.” He didn’t look at Herbert as he spoke, just kept his eyes locked with Ash’s. He knelt down beside the bound Ash, just out of reach, and began to speak. 

“Me and mine, we’re tired of waiting. Well, mostly mine – I’m here after all. We want what humans have: life and the delicious pain that goes with it. But no one has worshipped us in thousands of years and the books that help give us access to this world have been decaying. Nothing lasts forever.” Here he stopped and smiled at Ash. Then he reached out and stroked the skin of Ash’s cheek with the back of his hand and Ash pulled away as far as he could without toppling to the floor. “Well, most things don’t last forever.” Ash felt dread begin to pool in his stomach. 

“Anyway, humans aren’t reading the Necronomicon anymore and when they do it’s only a handful of them and our purchase in this world is tenuous. There’s a solution to this but it’s unlikely, rare. You need someone quite special…” Herbert was staring hard at Ash, but Ash was just remembering his image drawn in the Necronomicon. The foretold hero. 

“We found that someone special and it took restraint we don’t normally have to keep from taking you right then. No, we molded you, tempered you, turned you into just what we would need. First was my liberation from you, then this plan here. We had hoped it would go off sooner but as you know there were… setbacks in past, as you well know. But I’m surprisingly patient for my kind. And you’re worth waiting for.” There was affection in Evil Ash’s voice and it made Ash shake. 

“The plan is to make one last book. A book that will last as long as we do, a book I will read and in doing so open an eternal passageway between your world and mine. Every living human will become our permanent host. This world will be ours.” Ash stared at a spot on the concrete floor and hoped the mere strength of his disbelief would banish all of this. Please let this not be happening. Evil Ash reached out to him again and smoothed down his hair. 

“You know the book Ashley. Bound in human flesh, inked in human blood. You will be our immortal book and we shall always be together. I shall read the words that are already imprinted on your soul and my siblings will finally get what we have longed for. And Herbert here gets front row seats for the end of the world.” 

Herbert’s eyes had long ago left Ash and settled on the Deadite instead. If looks could kill Evil Ash would have been dead ten times over and the world would have been saved. “That’s why no one is bothering you right now,” Evil Ash said, ignoring the look and affably ruffling Herbert’s hair. Herbert snorted forcefully and yanked his head away. 

Evil Ash leaned into the darkness and rummaged around for a moment before rising back up. In one hand was a sheaf or rough, strange paper. In the other a brush. He sat down on the floor next to Ash and casually tore a hole in his side. Ash yelped at the sudden pain. Evil Ash dipped a brush into the flow of blood and began his work. 

“The reagent certainly adds something – fine work Mr. West. But it does coagulate pretty quickly. I’m going to have to tear you open a good deal more than I had anticipated.” Ash was breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, a calming technique that wasn’t really working. Across the small circle Herbert had begun struggling again in a burning, silent rage. Ash watched him, feeling hopeless, until Evil Ash looked up from the page and watched him too. There was some small emotion playing across his face. A plan began to take shape in Ash’s mind. 

It was ridiculous, it was probably impossible. It was the only fucking thing he could think to do. 

So Ash buried his plan under thick layers of emotion. He thought of the loved ones he had already lost and he watched Herbert pull futilely against his bonds. Sweat dripped off of the scientist even though the basement was cool. Ash didn’t want Herbert to watch him be bled and skinned. Ash didn’t want Herbert to see this. He didn’t want Herbert here. That was the thought he lit upon, clung to. 

Then he found the connection in his mind between himself and his copy, the one he was too cowardly to explore, and threw it all the way open. He pushed his sadness and desperation against the boundary. Evil Ash gave him a questioning look. 

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” There wasn’t anger in the voice, just confusion and Ash refused to let himself get excited at that. 

“Please let him go,” Ash said and he allowed his voice to come out in a begging tone. Because he was begging – there was nothing he wanted more than Herbert’s freedom in this moment. “You can see what he means here. He’s the last living person left, the last one I care about. Please don’t make him watch this.” A look of quiet wonder dawned on his double’s face and Ash could only hope that was a good sign. 

A furious voice cut through the silence. “I’m not leaving you!” Herbert twisted his body and lost the balance on his knees. He crashed to the floor but glared up in defiance even from his prone position. Evil Ash smiled and there was more than a hint of fondness in it. 

“It will be mere minutes you know. It’s not much freedom.” 

“I don’t care. Please.” Evil Ash seemed to be wavering on the edge of his decision. “Doesn’t a dying man get a final request?” 

“You’re not listening!” Herbert snarled up at them. “I will not leave you here!” 

Evil Ash turned to Ash and gave a small nod. Then he stood and strode over to the prone scientist, tearing through his rope bonds as easily as tissue paper. Herbert stood and rubbed at his bleeding wrists. He was still full of rage, though there was a hairsbreadth of uncertainty there too. 

“Ash-“ he tried to say but Ash cut him off. 

“Just get out of here Herbert,” he said forcefully and tried to give the scientist a meaningful look without alerting Evil Ash. “Get as far away from here as you can.” 

“Might as well listen to the man, for all the good it will do you.” Evil Ash sat back down and dug his fingers into Ash’s side again. Ash screamed. “Get out of here before I change my mind.” 

***

Herbert took one halting step into the darkness, then another. This was it? A short bit of autonomy before his body became a plaything for a Deadite and his soul burned for eternity? This was what Ash wanted? 

That couldn’t possibly be right. 

Still, he wasn’t sure what he could do. There weren’t any weapons down here (and he didn’t trust the junk to hold up) and Herbert was pretty sure that even with his reagent-enhanced strength he stood no chance against Evil Ash in a fight. So he kept walking in the dark, towards a door in the gloom, mind racing furiously. They were too far from civilization to get reinforcements, the building didn’t seem like it would burn. What could he do alone? 

His path brought him to the circumference of the circle the Necronomicons were arrayed in and as he stepped through the line he could almost feel the things watching him. They lost interest though and turned their awful attention back to the bloodletting at the center of the circle. Herbert could still feel the book’s words sitting on his tongue on the off chance he wanted to say them. 

Herbert’s brain was turning over and over, his blood almost boiling with intensity. There must be something…

Then, on the ground just ahead of him, so dark in the gloom he almost thought he was imagining it, was his doctor’s bag. He’d dropped it when he passed out, but here it was. Herbert felt a spike through his soul and he rushed forward as quietly as possible. With one swift yank he pulled it open. Inside were his bottled of reagent, the plastic unbroken. The case his kept his needles in was banged up but the needles inside were whole. 

Herbert sucked a careful breath in through his teeth. The books were obviously of the Deadites and though they were mostly book they _were_ bound in undead flesh. Would the reagent even work? Herbert felt himself focus into a razor edge of intensity and he filled one needle to the brim with the green liquid. There was really only one way to find out, wasn’t there? Herbert turned back towards the horrific circle and crept forward into the dark. 

***

Ash was letting his head hang low and his bloodied hair hang in his face. He looked defeated. To be honest he felt a little defeated every time Evil Ash gouged into his side for more ink. The pages of the book were flying by under his double’s fingers. 

But the pose allowed Ash to keep an eye on the direction Herbert had gone. The candles didn’t illuminate too much, so Ash couldn’t tell if Herbert had actually left and he wondered if he had sold it too hard. He wanted Herbert free for some kind of ambush but he wouldn’t be surprised in the scientist had actually left. Ash’s eyes flutter closed and, for just one moment, he was happy that he had at least accomplished that much. For all the good it did. 

He felt a hand rest on the side of his face and his eyes snapped open. “No sleeping,” Evil Ash said cheerily. “This isn’t nearly as much fun for me if you pass out.” Then his double held up some of the pages, showing off one of the book’s many elaborate illustrations. “Does this look good to you? Be honest.” 

Ash tried to spit on the pages but his doppelganger yanked them out of the way and then, in retaliation, wound one hand in Ash’s hair and pulled backward, hard. “I ought to take your face off right now,” he hissed into Ash’s ear. “Take it right off and keep you alive. Lucky for you I’m feeling generous.” Ash had his eyes locked on Evil Ash’s face until a flicker of movement out in the gloom. He very carefully didn’t focus on it. 

Evil Ash released his head and bent back over his work, digging his fingers into Ash’s side absently but with extra viciousness. Ash screamed but finally looked out into the dark fully. Moving slowly amongst the junk was Herbert and he looked to have a full needle of reagent in his hand. Ash’s heart raced with sudden hope but he hid it under a helpless shudder. 

It wasn’t over. Not yet. 

***

Herbert was fairly sure Ash had seen him even though the man’s eyes had slid right over his position. When Evil Ash was preoccupied Herbert lifted his needle slightly, trying to clue Ash into his plan. All of this was just hope now but Herbert pressed on. His mind flashed back to his reanimation of Ash, how he had just hoped then. He might be a scientist but he knew a little about hope. 

Ahead of Herbert was a book, one with its vacant eye sockets fixed firmly on the center of the circle. Herbert padded forward and carefully knelt beside the thing. It barely acknowledged his presence, which suited Herbert fine. Still that would probably change when Herbert injected the thing. In his memory the book spoke and screeched and Herbert knew he couldn’t risk that happening here. Evil Ash would kill him as soon as look at him. So Herbert reluctantly lowered his bag to the ground, adjusted his needle in his right hand and slowly brought his wrapped left hand down over the book’s mouth. The horrid thing didn’t even flinch. 

Moving slowly, as if to avoid startling a wild animal, Herbert pushed the needle into the dry, ancient flesh. Still the thing didn’t respond. Steady pressure on the plunger and then the reagent was in the book, in its skin. It was still for a moment longer, then the empty sockets widened and the thing shrieked into his palm. The sound was followed quickly by teeth. Herbert clenched his own and bore down harder on the book as it began to shake and buck. It was working, the thing was dying. Old teeth shredded his hand but Herbert could bear it. He had to. 

The teeth had cut quite deep when the thing gave one last guttural cry and exploded outward, shreds of wrinkled flesh flying like the world’s most morbid confetti. Herbert yanked his bleeding hand from the husk. The atmosphere of the room had changed and Herbert didn’t dare look up at the two versions of Ash at the center of the room. He heard a snarl and then, above it, “Keep going!” and he scrambled forward into the dark, towards the next book. 

***

Ash was not watching Herbert, as much as he wanted to. No, he was feverishly debating whether he should try and talk to Evil Ash as a distraction measure or if he should stay silent so as not to arouse suspicion. His double seemed to be about three quarters of the way through the pages he was making. Ash shuddered, dizzy with blood loss. The book’s words rested in the crannies of his mind and it was only exhaustion that kept them from tumbling out. 

Evil Ash was tarrying over a certain passage, eying the page one way and then another. Ash allowed himself a longer look at Herbert’s shape in the dark. The form hunched over and Ash’s instincts clanged against his tired bones. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. 

He felt the needle go in, a soft prick in the flesh of his arm, even though he was here and not there. Evil Ash frowned, though it was hard to tell if it was from the phantom sensation or the bit of writing he was still mulling. Then the reagent went in and it burned along his length. Evil Ash sat bolt upright, shock shading across his face. Then he was all fury. Ash felt the book die, felt the pressure on his soul easing and he couldn’t suppress his grin. Evil Ash snarled, a low threat that carried, and Ash quickly yelled “Keep going!” in case Herbert had frozen up. Unlikely, but still. 

But now his double was about to leap into the darkness to kill Herbert and Ash was still tied up and bleeding. He had no idea what to do, but his instincts and his tongue kicked in without him thinking about it. He found the words that Annie had said, the ones to summon Deadites to you before banishing them. They flowed practiced from his tongue despite never having said them before. 

In front of him Evil Ash lurched as if hooks had caught his spine. He wheeled on Ash and his eye narrowed dangerously. “You’re going to regret that.” 

Ash swallowed as his double stalked towards him, then coughed up the beginning of the words to send the evil away. Evil Ash lurched like he had been shoved in the shoulder but he kept coming. 

“That opens the portal,” he hissed. “You sure you want to do that?” 

Ash hesitated and it was just long enough for Evil Ash to get close enough to kick him savagely in the chest. All of the air in Ash’s lungs whooshed out of him and he sagged in his bonds. 

“And stay quiet,” he said, still standing over Ash’s body. Ash felt the second needle go in, this one between his shoulder blades, and he heard Evil Ash suck in an angry breath. Ash focused on his own lungs – he needed his breath back and fast. 

***

The second book had felt him coming and was waiting. The sockets were baleful and the thing licked its narrow lips as he got close. Herbert didn’t want to touch it since he knew now that covering the mouth was useless – the Deadite knew he was here and what he was doing. Indeed, speed was of the utmost importance. But the thing was flopping and twitching and he was going to have to hold it some to inject it properly. 

Herbert tried to carefully lay a hand down on a part of the book that was not mouth but as his hand made contact with the papery skin the thing was suddenly all mouth. It gulped at his hand and Herbert’s arm slipped down into it, up to just above his elbow. The thing began to chew. 

Herbert gritted his teeth and plunged the needle into the book. At the same time he yanked against the undead jaws, panic rising. He could feel searing heat at the tips of his fingers and he tried very hard to not think about where his arm might be. The bandages on his hand began to burn. He struggled and his arm began to come out, grooves of flesh being carved out along its length. The book was shaking itself apart now but it didn’t cry out – it just continued to tear at his flesh. 

Herbert didn’t know what might happen to his arm if it was still in the book’s jaws when it died but he knew that he didn’t want to find out. He braced himself, planting one shoe on the book’s awful face and pulled. His arm came free, ribbons of flesh hanging off of it, the fingertips burned. Just in time too – the book unpeeled itself outward, rotting in timelapse. 

Behind him Herbert heard chanting start up again and harsh breathing and he didn’t even spare a glance. He had to trust that Ash knew what he was doing, at least as much as Herbert did. 

***

Ash thought about his lungs and diagrams ghosted by in his mind. He sucked a deep breath as he felt the second book dying and said the summoning words again. As Evil Ash wheeled around Ash searched through the book in his mind, hoping for something for containment or incapacitation. It made sense that nothing like that could be found in the Necronomicon’s pages – if the knowledge came from the Deadites themselves why provide that information? 

The second book was completely dead and Ash could almost taste his double’s murderous intent. Ash decided to experiment some, alternating syllables of summoning and banishment to see if he could keep the Deadite at a certain distance away. For a moment it seemed to be working – Evil Ash lurched forwards and backwards, his movement contained to a tight circle. Then the Deadite stilled and reached down for some junk on the floor. The random metal debris snapped like rotted wood in his hands and he flung one piece into the darkness beyond the candles, probably aiming for Herbert. Suddenly, as if galvanized by the debris, the needle sank into the third book. Ash felt it on his cheek, just below his eye. 

Evil Ash took the other handful of broken furniture and hurled it at Ash. A heavy piece of wood caught him in the temple and Ash faltered in his recitation. It was enough of an opening. Evil Ash lunged forward, covering the space between them in a blink and slammed a forceful backhand into Ash’s jaw. 

He felt the bone crack and he continued to feel his jaw hanging at an unnatural angle. Evil Ash was smiling down at him, cold and triumphant. “That should shut you up.” Then he turned back towards the circle and began to saunter away. He could take his time now. 

Ash felt the third book die and he closed his eyes tightly. His jaw ached and was killing him and Herbert besides. His brain flipped through possibilities, outcomes, one after another. In his mind’s eye the same images kept popping back up: Deadites that wouldn’t stop coming no matter how much of their bodies were missing. Reanimated people ignoring life ending injuries and tearing through whatever was in their way. Ash didn’t know if he was a Deadite or just a reanimated corpse or both or neither. Time to tap into his legacy. 

Ash folded his neck down and pressed his jaw hard against his sternum, holding it in its usual place. The pain was piercing but he kept the pressure steady and he could feel the bone grinding back together, catching. It was the work of a moment, an accursedly long moment. 

Then he spat the words into the dark, putting all his force of will behind them. Evil Ash jerked backwards and fell under the assault of the unexpected intonation. When he rolled over his face was a mixture of concern and fear. The fourth needle slid in just below Ash’s navel. For the first time since entering the warehouse Ash laughed. 

***

Herbert was running as best he could in the crowded room. He slid into the third book like a practiced baseball player and promptly wrapped his body around it. Good thing too, as the book faded from his view as soon as he was near it. Confused Herbert turned his head one way, then another, hoping to catch sight of the thing again. At least it wasn’t biting him. 

Still, this was wasting time. No matter how he focused the thing only wavered in and out. He tried to pin in under his hand but it slid around and he was unable to catch it. Frustration was roaring through him, rage. Again and again he slammed his free hand into the floor and again and again he missed. 

Then a sharpened piece of metal flew by his face, close enough for the wind of it to ruffle his hair. The sudden rush of adrenaline snapped the world back into focus as it was and Herbert rushed to inject the book before it pulled another trick. Distantly Herbert heard a terrible cracking and then there was silence. He pressed down on the book as if that might speed the process. This one died quickly, held in place under both of his hands. It only whimpered pitifully as it died. 

Then Herbert was crawling low away from where he had been, pausing a moment in between books to refill two of his needles. He only needed two more. The thought was like the floor falling out from underneath him again. So close. 

The chant started up again, fiercer than before and Herbert plunged forward. He wondered if the fourth book would pull some sort of trick on him like the third one had. As he got close to the book it didn’t do anything – no movement, no noise. It almost seemed like it was already dead. He brought the needle down but before it could pierce the skin he was suddenly somewhere else, staring up from the ground with eyes ancient and knowing. Bent over him was a small man who was dripping sweat and blood. In his hand was a needle filled with a toxic substance. The needle was descending but it froze before piercing him. He was terribly afraid. 

Herbert pulled the needle away and found himself back in his body. He blinked once, then steeled his resolve and tried to move faster. Again he found himself staring up at his doom and trembling. This time the man’s face looked different, almost dry and wrinkled, with empty black eye sockets. Almost like the faces of the Necronomicon. 

Herbert wrenched his arm back and felt at his face in a panic. The skin was slick with sweat and no closer to death and desiccation then it had been before. Shaking, Herbert raised the needle again and struck forward, relying on a mixture of instinct and intellect to carry him through. 

The needle was coming down and it was terrible, terrifying, but inertia kept it barreling forward even as he screamed wordlessly. He felt it go in, right between his eyes and the reagent burned through him, destroying whatever it touched, spreading like a contagion. He screamed again but it was with his human voice and he scrabbled away backwards from the convulsing book in case it pulled him in again. Its scream faded into a sigh and Herbert gathered himself. One last book. It was almost unbelievable. Herbert made sure his last full needle was in hand and got moving. 

***

By the time the fourth book died Evil Ash had risen to his feet. However he made no moves, just stood still. For the first time he seemed worried. 

“You’re not going to let me get near him, are you?” 

“Nope. I’ll pull you on top of me before I let you touch Herbert.” 

“You’d sacrifice so much to save one life?” 

“Don’t twist up the situation – that one life is saving the world right now.” 

Evil Ash didn’t respond. He stood still, taking deep, deliberate breaths. Finally, he spoke. “I’m going to kill you.” It was not a threat so much as a promise. Evil Ash began to walk forward with the same deliberateness. Ash cried out the banishing words from the Necronomicon. They were slicing into the meat of his throat now and he pushed to make sure he was still enunciating clearly around the froth of blood and reagent gathering at the corners of his mouth. Evil Ash kept shaking with each syllable but he didn’t stop coming forward. Each shake and the Deadite looked more like his dead self, flesh purpled, cheeks sunken. He glared at the still-bound Ash. 

“You’re not the only one who’s determined Ashley.” Ash swallowed and tensed for a fight. From out beyond the candlelight came a roar of _JOIN US_ and he involuntarily cried out. Evil Ash leapt forward at that, teeth bared. 

***

Herbert closed the last bit of distance to the final Necronomicon on his hands and knees. No hesitation, not now that his goal was so close at hand. But as he raised the needle the book’s sockets flashed and burned. The whole thing was suddenly pouring heat and the flesh moved with new purpose. Horror filled Herbert as he felt the whole of the Deadite universe and race contained within this single book. The mouth moved, formed words. 

_JOIN US_

Herbert tried to scream out of a suddenly cracked and dried throat. He collapsed back to his hands and knees and was lucky to stay that upright. All the voices of hell gibbered out of the thing and they licked across his skin like wind from a desert. The voices joined together and made the same demand. 

_JOIN US_

Herbert felt himself twisting up. It was like the voice could make him change, make him join the Deadites not through possession but through the burning away of his human parts. They would scour him down until all that was left was the murdering part of him, the ruthlessness, the cold and then that core would be filled in with heat and hate. Blood began to leak from Herbert’s ears and eyes and nose and mouth. 

The individual voices, the overwhelming number of them, were now demanding he join them in a cacophony. The concrete floor below him frosted, became reflective and Herbert found himself staring into his own Deadite face. It was grinning and mouthing the words along. The book took a breath. 

_JOIN US_

Herbert wasn’t screaming now, just breathing heavily. His reflection seemed ready to reach up and embrace him. The blood that dripped off of him spattered down, obscuring his reflection’s face. For a moment Herbert’s world was silence. He remembered himself. 

_JOIN US_

As loud at the world, as loud as his own desperate heart. Herbert felt his mouth begin to form a word and he realized he wasn’t sure what he would say. He trusted himself. 

“No.” 

Then he rose up and plunged the needle in, slamming the plunger down with his left hand. All the voices of all the Deadites screamed out in rage and pain and Herbert rolled away and did his best to press himself into the floor, to let the storm pass. The scream was echoed behind him. 

***

Evil Ash had reached for Ash’s throat as an opening move but Ash drove him away with a head butt. His responses were limited but he was not going to go down without a fight. The Deadite shook his head and leapt forward again and they were joined. 

Clawing and tearing from Evil Ash, biting and thrashing from Ash. They felt the needle slam into the last book but neither let up. Ash felt his bonds loosening somewhat and he twisted around all the more, slamming his shoulder into his double. Evil Ash staggered back a little and Ash could see that the Deadite’s edges were becoming hazy and little threads of him were drifting away like dust. The air around them became thick. Evil Ash screamed once, then set back to work at killing Ash. He had lost whatever cool he had, reverting to his animalistic nature. Ash fought back but the ferocity was hard to counter. 

Even as the Deadite was falling apart he throttled Ash and Ash fought to keep breathing. Each breath pulled in a lungful of the dust Evil Ash was collapsing into and he choked on it. He felt strange, light headed, but even as his vision shrank to a pinpoint he bared his teeth in a defiant grin. 

_Fuck you you bastard_ he thought as his vision went dark. _We won_.

***

The warehouse around him had fallen silent. Herbert pushed himself up onto his knees with arms that were shaking, on the verge of giving out completely. He spent a moment just focusing on breathing and wiping the blood out of his eyes. 

He realized he couldn’t hear anyone else breathing. 

The relief he was feeling died on the vine, replaced only by dread. 

“Ash?” he called out and his voice shook as much as his body did. Herbert didn’t care. All he cared about was a response. A response that was not coming. 

Herbert thought about standing but his body was shaking so badly he didn’t trust himself to not fall over. Instead he crawled forward on bloodied hands and knees. Pain lanced up from his torn up hands to his shoulders. His mind was blissfully clear of dark words, but that was no solace now. “Ash?” 

Still nothing. 

The crawl took too long, far too long, but he couldn’t go any faster or better. He didn’t call out anymore, couldn’t bear the silence in return. Ash couldn’t possibly be dead, not after all of this. He’d earned a victory, earned some rest. This couldn’t be how it fucking ended. 

It wasn’t fair. 

Herbert finally came along Ash’s body. It lay still on the floor, blood still dripping from fresh wounds. Herbert couldn’t tell if Ash’s chest was rising and falling with breath because his eyes were still partially filled with blood. He felt tears too and he hated it. This couldn’t be the end. 

Ash looked peaceful almost and Herbert absently noted that where his stump had once been there was now a hand, one that was gnarled and purplish with claw like nails at the end. He didn’t care right now. He knelt at Ash’s side and hesitated to touch him. 

“Ash?” he said once more and a watery track of blood ran down his face. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. 

Then Ash coughed and opened his eyes. He saw Herbert and sat up quickly, eyes searching Herbert’s face to see how badly the scientist was hurt. 

“Are you alright?” His voice was hoarse, full of selfless concern. 

Herbert couldn’t contain himself – relief and happiness flooded his system and he leaned in and kissed the bigger man. He felt Ash start with surprise but not pull away. Indeed, he smiled under Herbert’s lips. Ash tasted like blood. 

Herbert got control of himself all at once, pulling away and quickly looking elsewhere. He burned with sudden embarrassment even as the relief he had dammed up in his heart flooded out, filled him. 

Ash leaned forward, reached out with both of his arms and wrapped Herbert in a huge hug. “We did it,” he said and Herbert felt tears fall onto his back. Ash was shaking with emotion, breath hitching up. “It’s over.”


	17. Epilogue

It wasn’t over, not exactly. Ash and Herbert had destroyed the unfinished book and dragged themselves out of the warehouse, back to the car. Along the way Ash couldn’t help but notice his returned hand. And the lacing of darkness inside himself that hadn’t been there since he’d been separated from his evil self in the 13th century. When he realized this the hand twitched. He didn’t bring it up to Herbert. 

They had driven back to Arkham to crash at the one safe place they knew and while Herbert had talked furiously during most of the drive he got quieter and quieter as they got closer to the college town. He was silent by the time they were knocking on the door, silent and withdrawn. When Dan had pulled it open and been horrified at their state all over again Herbert had broken down crying, too exhausted to modulate his emotions. 

Patching them up a second time had been an all day job and Herbert had promptly passed out when his turn was over. Ash sat through the ministrations quietly, testing his returned hand. 

It was a Deadite hand, there was no doubt about that, but it obeyed him about 99 percent of the time. At one point it had dug its nails deep into his thigh and Ash filled with fear. He wondered if Evil Ash would be able to rise up and choke him, kill him from within. He wondered if his twin would try to come back. 

When Herbert woke up Ash told him about the problem, about his fear. Herbert had mulled it over and then snuck into Miskatonic to steal an epipen. He had modified it in the basement, filling it with fresh reagent instead. 

“If you think he’s going to take you over and you need it.” He had handed the thing to Ash with a serious face. “And if you can’t get to it in time or it doesn’t work I promise I’ll end your life.” Ash had been shocked at the offer, though he wasn’t sure Herbert had understood the magnitude of his own words. That was a long promise. 

But the next day Herbert began to look into a school he could transfer his credits to and finish his medical degree and when he looked into housing he only looked at places with two bedrooms. And a basement, of course. 

Dan helped with the transfer process, pulling a couple strings to get the missing Herbert West’s credits sent to a new little school, one eager for sharp young minds to start their legacy. The application process went by in a blur. Ash was on the couch, scribbling into a notebook, when Herbert came in with some news. 

“They’ve offered me pretty a generous stipend and housing even. Housing for two.” 

Ash frowned at the words in his lap. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to get a job or even if-“

“Don’t worry about it,” Herbert said, waving a hand. “Like I said, a generous stipend.” 

They packed up what little they had a few days later when it was time to move. At the last minute Herbert remembered the photo and, good to his word, returned it. Dan demanded a quick photo of Herbert and Ash to go on the fridge next to it and Ash snorted. “You can have one when we’re fully healed. No one wants these gross faces on anything.” 

The new college was not far from Arkham, only a little over half a day’s drive. Herbert blazed through the final year of his program with no problems and when he graduated the program begged for him to stay on as an assistant professor. Did they mention they’d fund his research completely? 

Sometimes Ash’s hand lashed out, but most days it was fine. Sometimes he suffered from waking nightmares and he exorcised them by writing them down. It turned out there was a small but loyal audience on the internet that was willing to pay for visceral nightmare writing. 

Herbert did much of his research out of their basement, in case Ash needed him. Ash tried to clear his schedule when the research was going on, in case Herbert needed him. 

It was a Saturday and Ash was sitting on the front porch, enjoying the sun. A slight breeze stirred the trees and he debated doing something useful with his time or just enjoying the day. He was leaning towards the latter when he heard footsteps coming up the path. He opened his eyes. 

She was tall, with dark hair and dark skin and she held her books in front of her like they might act as a shield. Ash smiled at her and she smiled back, looking relieved. 

“Hello,” she said in a soft, nervous voice. “Doctor West should be expecting me.” She smiled slightly. “He mentioned you’d be here.” 

Ash’s brain clicked and he nodded, suddenly remembering the appointment. “One sec.” He twisted in his chair and called through the screen porch door. “Herbert!” 

The young woman in front of him looked surprised, but smiled again when he smiled at her. She didn’t seem like one for making small talk so Ash just regarded her. In her eyes he could see the same drive and ambition that he saw in Herbert every day. Real protégé material here. 

The porch door clattered open. “Sorry,” Herbert said absently, “I was on the phone with Dan about next month’s conference. He’s probably going to come stay for a week to do some last, vital experiments.” He looked up and saw his guest. He smiled. “Ah, Miss Jackson.” 

“Shauna is fine, Dr. West.” 

“If Shauna is fine then Herbert is fine.” She looked surprised, but nodded. “Please, come in. The lab is downstairs.” 

“Wait,” Ash said and the pair of scientists paused. “If you need me, if either of you need me,” and here he gave Shauna a serious look, “come get me or just yell and I’ll be down there as fast as possible. Don’t hesitate.” 

“Thank you Ash,” Herbert said and Shauna looked confused but uttered a small “Thanks.” As they turned to go Ash called out one more thing. 

“Don’t scare this one off Herbert!” He heard Herbert snort as they entered the house. Ash settled back into his chair, breathing in the growing scent of fall. On the armrest his right hand dug its sharp nails into the soft wood, then relaxed. Ash considered his epipen, then left it where it lay. Today was too beautiful. He was not ready to go. 

Ash sank back into his chair and quietly enjoyed life.


End file.
